adoption???

I would like to put out some advice for adoptive parents. If at all possible, don't begrudge your child from finding out who his/her biological family is. My older brother's adoptive mom would go into fits of hysterical crying whenever he tried to talk about his biological family. And when he finally did find us (adoption records were sealed in the state he was born in so we would not have been able to find him without a very expensive private detective), his adoptive mother always hated it. She would try to guilt him a lot, so he started hiding it from her. We weren't allowed to call him at home. (He was in college and 21.) He never got to share his experience of knowing us and feeling like he finally belonged with his own mother, all because she couldn't handle the fact that he wanted to know. (his words, not mine)

So that's my advice...support your adopted child in whatever he/she wants to know. Some kids don't want to know. My brother's adopted sister wanted absolutely nothing to do with her biological mom.

My sister was born in 1978, the same year they passed the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 "ICWA helps keep American Indian children with American Indian families." My sister is Creek Indian and very much looks it. I am very much Caucasian as they get, as well as my adoptive parents. Did that contribute to my sister feeling different? Back then I didn't think so, but hindsight and all that. I do believe it made it hard on her sometimes to look so different than the rest of us. It was always obvious she was not born into the family, but I could pass easily. After she met her birth dad a few years ago, she filed for and got her role number with the tribe. She is finally at peace with who she is. My suggestion, which comes only from my own experiences, is if you decide to adopt interracially, make sure that child gets as much culture and experience from their race as is possible for you to provide.

Yes, that's something I have thought might be helpful... luckily I live in a very diverse area, and I have friends of all different backgrounds! I would definitely try to help my (hypothetical) child embrace his/her culture as much as possible

I LOVE that you are so open to adopting outside of your own racial background. I am actually a family law lawyer that has helped facilitate quite a few adoptions (including interracial ones) and it always warms my heart to see love that is truly colorblind.
I am actually bi-racial myself (my mother is Jewish and my father is Black) and always had a hard time understanding when people asked me questions like "does your mom know how to do your hair?" Luckily though I am from a big, diverse city (Chicago) so I didn't run into a whole lot of behavior like this.
I think the most important thing is to love the *kitten* out of that child and make sure to expose them, and yourselves, to as MANY cultures as possible.

I am adopted by my maternal grandparents and I am thankful that they did it. My bio mom did not turn out that great and I know that had I lived with her, I probably would not have the life that i have now. Also at 13 i was raped and became pregnant, I knew that I was too young to raise a baby so I asked my aunt and uncle to adopt her. She is now 12 years old and is doing awesome. She has the life that i would not have been able to give her at the time.

I am SO sorry to hear this for you, but am so happy for he doing so well. Hugs, sweetie!

I am adopted. I was placed when I was a couple of months old. My adoptive family is great.... much much different than I am but a great family. I had everything I ever wanted or needed and I knew from a very early age that I was adopted. Thanks to cabbage patch dolls. lol.
I found my biological family 2 years ago and discovered they had actually gotten married a few years after I was born and I have a sister. That was freaky! Getting to know them has been amazing. My sister and I are into the same things, laugh the same, look the same. I tell ya... as someone who was always the odd man out with their family... this is a weird thing to get used to! But I love it.

my adoption is a little different. Story goes..... Guy sees girl, guy ogles girl who only tagged along to watch her brother play some touch football. Guy asks girl out. He was a friend of her brothers and I suppose she thought he was nice looking. They went out, they got pregnant with me, got married. He eventually started hitting her. When they went to Hawaii to visit his family, he decided to stay an extra week, while she went home to get back to work. During that week, she realized she was over the abuse and was more afraid he might start beating me, so she left him when he got back with me. He tried to kdinap me one or twice, but she outsmarted him. He didn't want me anyway, he wanted to take me to get her back. When that didn't work he flew home to Hawaii. Meanwhile, my mom met and fell in love with this great guy who also had a daughter a few months older. I was 1, she was almost 2. They married and started a life together. As a small child, my dad always wanted to be more than a "blended" family. He wanted me to feel like I belonged. They tried several times to adopt me, but due to legal issues and more importantly financial issues, they could not, but he was and always will be my daddy. Fastforward a LOT, to one week after my 18th birthday. We were in the judges chambers getting the adoption finalized, just in time for my graduation, so we could "really" be a real family. (All my life, I tried using his last name for school and was always told I was not allowed, but he was MY dad and my WHOLE family shared the same last name...) But, for graduation, I got to sit next to my sister. And, that was what our parents wanted the most. To see their girls graduate together.

ETA: My father is now in my life again. We've made amends and he has been clean and sober for 15+ years. He regrets every single day the pain he caused my mom, losing her, losing me. But, he and I are now on good terms and my family just keeps growing.

Bry - your story brought tears to my eyes. *hugs*

This is painful to share, but if it can help someone, I will share. I was raped when I was 18 and subsequently had an abortion. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think about what I did and how horrible it was. If only I had had the courage to face my parents and the consequences, that child could have had a chance.

I adopted a little girl from Russia 2 years ago and she is the love of my life. She is 8 now and was put in the orphanage when she was 6. She took care of her baby sister, Katia because her mother and aunt were drunk all the time. She tried to do her best, but the baby died in her arms of malnutrition. She thinks about her family in Russia a lot, but she is grateful she has a home with us and a chance at life. I feel blessed to have had another chance to save a life and give her an opportunity for a good life with lots of love. Would I ever want her to see her mother again? Yes, if she wanted to. I'd love to show her what a beautiful girl she turned out to be and thank her in person for this gift.

This made me get a few tears in my eyes. Thanks for sharing. You did a wonderful thing by saving your daughters life. Focus on that and live each day knowing that she has the best life because you opened your home to her and gave her everything she needs.

I plan on adopting. The last time I was in the Dominican Republic there was a cute 22 year old....

Seriously I do plan to adopt. I can't imagine having the means to do it and not doing it. I have several friends that were adopted and I just think they wouldn't be a part of my life has their families not made that decision. Plus I want my son to have a sibling.

Oh and you dont have to have religious or political reasons to have an opinion. I hate religion and politics and I can still think something is just 'wrong'. OP maybe for the 'sensitive' you can rephrase it as - abortion was the wrong decision for her. Make everyone poop rainbows.

I was adopted at 1 month old by my parents, who are, btw, the best parents in the world. :bigsmile: They aren't my adoptive parents. They are my parents. I also have a brother, 2 years older than me, who was adopted as well (different biological parents).

When I was 29, my son was born. I looked at him and realized that he was the only person in the world that I knew that had my blood. The only one with DNA like mine that I knew. That brewed in me for a few years until one day, I called my mom and told her that I wanted to search for my biological family. She said, "Give me 30 minutes, I'll be right over." She went into her closet and got out the file that she had kept for decades. It had everything that she had learned about me from the adoption agency. It even included the used envelope that she grabbed to jot notes on when the adoption agency called and told her they had a beautiful baby girl for my mom and dad to pick up the next day.

I set about on my search but I did it with open eyes and open heart. I saw so many "failed" reunions and adoptees searching for reason that, to me, seemed ill-fated. I even saw one adoptee who was trying to get DNA from a Hilton (as in Paris) family member, because he was convinced he looked like that family and wanted to cash in on the name. Tsk tsk. I saw adoptees who searched because they thought it would give them answers to everything. They thought they would be accepted and finally find some piece of themselves to make them whole. I saw many of those adoptees crushed when they were refused a meeting and their existence denied. I saw a lot of heartbreak.

I searched with the knowledge that I might not find anybody, that I might find someone who wasn't who I might have put together in my mind, that I might be rejected. I took the search on as a journey to be experienced (same as my weight loss). I was also *very* careful in my search, for it was my #1 rule to not disrupt the lives of any of my birth family if they so chose. I did *not* have an open adoption. For all I knew, I could find a birth mother who never told anyone that I existed.

I used a lot of ingenuity and little bit of dishonesty (unavoidable) to search. What did I find? I found that birth mother who never told anyone that I existed. But it wasn't a bad ending. By the time I found my birth family, both my birth mother and birth father were deceased. I never got to meet them. But I found 6 (yes, 6) half siblings. I was my birth mother's 7th child. By some twist of fate, when one of my 1/2 brothers was 16, he saw my birth mother pregnant with me, when she said she was going away "on a business trip." That 1/2 brother told his brothers and sisters, for decades, that there was a 7th child. All 6 of them grilled my birth mother for decades. She denied my existence. But they knew.

So when I placed the phone call to one of them (ironically, out of the 6, the first one I called was the one who had seen my birth mother pregnant, the one who *knew*), and I was able to stammer out that I believed we were siblings, I was met with a moment of silence and then the magical words: "We've been waiting for this phone call for a long time."

So I've had a good ending, though I didn't search with the expectation that I would. My 1/2 siblings and I have maintained some relationships. We have agreed that it was good fate that I didn't find their mother while she was still alive. It would have been incredible difficult on her and me. I believe that she, in some form, blocked my existence out of her head. If I had showed up, it might have broken her. I wouldn't have wanted to do that.

I was, a few years ago, fortunate enough to meet my birth mother's sister. While she didn't know about me before, she also welcomed me with open arms. Aunt Irene is deceased now, but I treasure the afternoon I spent with her. She was able to give me a side of my birth mother that my 1/2 siblings couldn't.

And I know this is long and thanks for sticking through it all the way, but I have one more thing to mention...I have a very square jaw. I always hated it. But when I would walk down the street in New York City (where I was adopted from), I would search faces, looking for square jaws. When I saw one, I would wonder, could it be? Who looks like me? This picture beloew is me and Aunt Irene when I met her in 2007. It brings tears to my eyes to this day. Our jaw, and our beady little eyes, and our mouth, and our smile. We look so much alike.



In the end, what I want to say that is most important of all is that while feelings about adoption are very personal things, I find it relevant to share my story carefully when the opportunity arises. My story is a fairy tale compared to 99% of most adoptees' stories. I believe that, in the case of closed adoptions, it is the adoptees' right to search and find. But, equally, it is the adoptees' obligation to search and find in a responsible manner so as to not disrupt the lives of those who may have left that part of themselves behind a long time ago. And I believe it is the adoptees' moral obligation to walk quietly and permanently away from any birth family member who says no to them.

I welcome questions from anyone who wants to pose them. I can also assist with any adoptee's search if the adoption took place in one of the 5 boroughs of New York.

Pangea250 - that made me cry, but in a good way. Thanks.