Visiting Family

Another post by Jenn, Susan's daughter. Susan passed away in April of 2014 after an 8-month battle with malignant melanoma. She met and knew her sisters for the last 7 months of her life. 

Family

This is just a note about the simple joy of being able to visit family (not always so simple for adoptees). Today I drove the hour and a half from my home to my mom's sister's home, both in New Jersey, for a visit with family. My two daughters, 13 and 11, and and my niece, 12, came with me. They spent most of the visit playing with their four-year-old "cousin" (actually my cousin's daughter), who cried and clung to them when they left. It is tough to say good-bye. 

I basked in the warmth of my mom's sister's family and enjoyed meeting her youngest son's new baby and hearing her oldest son's college-age daughter, an accomplished singer, serenade us in the kitchen.  Her daughter (the four-year old's mother) gave me the best hug hello (and goodbye), and it reminded me of when my mom first met everyone, how she told me, "You are just not going to believe how warm they are." She talked about the hugs. 

This is my family. How strange to think had my mom never done some investigating to find them (after she was told not to - told to leave it alone and just be grateful for the life she had), had I never sent a letter with a few photos of my children tucked inside, that we would just be passing by one another, never connecting. We came so close to that. 

I know my mom would have loved this visit today. She spoke about the feeling of wholeness and healing that came from finally knowing her full story once she found her sisters, and though she had so little time with them, wholeness and healing matter. What my mom walked through to get there, all that suffering, it mattered. It got us somewhere. It got us to today. 

When There's Not a Hallmark Ending ... Why OBC Access Still Matters

Another post by Jenn, Susan's daughter. Susan passed away from malignant melanoma in April of 2014, eight months after finding her biological sisters. Her original mother passed away in October of 2013. We still do not have her original birth certificate, and I'm not sure that we ever will. The Children's Home Society of New Jersey (in Trenton) from which she was adopted in 1950 will not release her file to us, and our request to the State of New Jersey for her OBC resulted in a letter stating that she was most likely "not adopted from New Jersey" (no file found). The OBC would not tell us anything we do not already know, of course, but it is something Susan fought for the right to have, so if it is out there, we would like it. 

Me, my family, and my dad. Together my dad and I keep this blog going. 

Last week my dad called me to let me know there was a new comment on this blog. Since the blog is still registered under his and my mom's e-mail, which he hasn't changed, he receives all notifications. The comment was on an entry from February of 2015, written by me, about adoption lawyers who oppose adoptee rights. It was based on my discovery of an adoption guidebook from 1988 co-written by an adoptive parent and New York adoption lawyer Stanley Michelman. Michelman died in 2009, according to a New York Times obituary. The obituary is the first entry that results from a Google search of his name. The second entry is a 1977 article about him being charged for arranging for the illegal adoption of four infants (also from the New York Times). I knew little about Michelman when I wrote my blog post in 2015 -- only that his book had astounded and shocked me. One of the comments on the original post, in particular, saddened me deeply:

I am searching for my child that was given up for adoption in 1975. I was lead to believe that the adoption records would be opened at some point in time. Little did I know that Stanley Michelman was representing both myself and the parents that were adopting. I feel for people who can not have children and want to adopt, but is it right to deceive the birth parents?

That comment was from January of 2016, and there were no new comments until my dad called me last week to tell me about this one (from "Anonymous"):

We adopted 2 children through Stanley Michelman in the '80s by private adoption. Our experience and that of the birth mothers was fantastic. We supported both birth mothers throughout their pregnancies. When my older son had questions, the office facilitated contact with the birth mother to see if she was open to contact. She was and we had a relationship for several years until my son was no longer interested. Our younger son's birth mother contacted our lawyer in Texas to initiate contact. It was a disaster. She used him to fill her emotional void and treated him terribly. 
I totallly support a registry where adoptees and birth mothers can sign up to find each other. I don't support an adoptee's or birth mother's right to have private adoptions unsealed. Both are entitled to their privacy. Not all reunions are Hallmark Classics as portrayed on tv. No one has the right to turn someone's life upside down because they feel like they are entitled. 

My dad and I spoke about how this adoptive parent missed the point of legislation allowing adoptees access to their original birth certificates. No one has a right to a relationship, of course, but all of us should have a right to know who we are. But it goes deeper than that. My dad and I talked about how my mom had most likely written something on this very issue, and so I went back and read. I found the response right there on my mom's first post:

While some individuals and groups are simply misinformed, I believe that the Catholic Conference of Bishops and some adoption agencies and attorneys willfully perpetuate these misconceptions because the closed statutes allow them to operate without transparency and accountability.

When there is no transparency, Catholic Charities, other adoption agencies and attorneys are the all-powerful gatekeepers of the truth -- that is just what actually transpired during the relinquishment process.  They maintain the records, and whatever shortcuts, mistruths or ethical violations may have occurred are forever protected .... 

... I am discouraged that some people continue to infer that adult adoptees are "stalkers" intent on destroying their original families or disrespecting their adoptive families.  I am likewise discouraged that those same people often paint original mothers as cowering figures consumed by shame, and who therefore need protective custody for life.

I am a 62-year-old mother of two and grandmother of six, yet I continue to be treated like a child by my state's adoption laws, unable to manage the most personal details of my life without outside assistance.  All of us touched by adoption are unique human beings of equal worth, and as adults we deserve to be treated like the adults we are.

Many adoptees I know are distrustful of authority, and I can certainly see why.  A member of the reform community recently shared a photo by Don Stitt containing these wise words:

Morality:  Doing what is right regardless of what you are told

Obedience:  Doing what you are told regardless of what is right

I sought out my original mother for several reasons -- for medical information, but also for healing and emotional closure.  She and I share a connection, no matter what anyone says, and I knew deep inside myself that what was right for me was to privately seek a reconciliation with her.  If I had done what I had been told by law and by the uninformed, I would be that "obedient" adoptee playing a script that had been provided to me by others.  In acting as I did, I felt that I was responding to a higher morality.

As we all know, authority is not always right.  Unfortunately, in the case of adoption law here in the states, it rarely is.

The anonymous adoptive parent commenting last week said that not all reunions are "Hallmark Classics as portrayed on tv." I know that. My mom's original mother never wanted to meet her and told her to "not cause trouble" because no one knew about her. This was, of course, deeply painful. The only reason my mother met her sisters at all was because she was dying, and I decided that I was going to risk "turning someone's life upside down" by sending a letter my mom had written several years prior but had never sent (to her older sister, who didn't know about her). My mom did not fight for adoptees' rights because she felt everyone was entitled to a Hallmark Classic. She fought for them because it was what is morally right. Registries don't work and hide egregious abuses. Access to original birth certificates for adoptees is just one small step towards a more just system, but it is a step, and I support that. I wish more adoption lawyers and adoptive parents* would too.

**NB: I know MANY wonderful adoptive parents who DO support full rights for their adopted children, but I make this comment because I know there are some that don't, including this anonymous commenter on the blog.

Adoption Matters (A Reflection on My Mom's Experience)

Another post by Jenn, Susan's daughter. Susan died in April of 2014 from malignant melanoma, eight months after being reunited with her sisters.

This is a picture of my mom and me from some long ago time (the 80s), on a long ago mountaintop, with her arm around me. She loved to ski and mentioned more than once that she would have been a ski instructor were she not a mom living in suburbia. This picture is so old, from so long ago, that I can barely conjure the memories to go along with it. But it matters. The fact that I was there, on that mountain, with my mom's arm around me, matters.

The same could be said about adoption. My mom, born 67 years ago this July 9th, was adopted six months later, leaving behind a 5-year-old sister she wouldn't meet for 63 years. She also left behind a mother, of course, her mother, the one whose heartbeat and voice she first knew, and would never know, save one brief phone call 50 years later in which she told my mom, "I always loved you in my heart." My mom was a secret, though, the fruit of an affair with an older, married man, a "family friend," and therefore could never be known. All she knew of this man, her father, was that he was from Denmark, like her mother, and that he was a pilot. Apparently there was a time when his son and wife were going to adopt my mom, but that never happened. Instead, she was adopted by Betty and Clarence Thomson of Haddonfield, New Jersey, where she joined her older brother, Doug, also adopted through the Children's Home Society of New Jersey. They lived a charmed life, with trips to the beach in the summer, a neighborhood full of friends (one of whom my mom would marry), and lots and lots of love. My mom is gone now, three years (the shock of it beginning to fade), and so are her parents. "No one loves you like your mom," she told me, after losing hers, in April of 2003. How lucky she was to have known a love like that.

But history, even without memory, still matters. There is a truth to my mom's life, one that extends to mine, and to my children's, that begins with how she came to be. Not knowing or being able to know that history, so personal and pertinent, she suffered. She did not die from this, of course. She died from malignant melanoma that presented itself as a tiny spot under the nail of her big toe when she was 47 years old. But the way in which that presentation resembles my mom's experience with adoption itself -- at first, pushed down into the tiniest corner of herself, and then, years later, unleashed with a wildness that could not be contained -- haunts me a bit. Adoption matters. It was a part of who my mom was, and it is a part of who I am. Time passes, but this remains. The truth remains, whether known or not.

The Letter My Mom Wrote

My mom (Susan Perry) in 2009 with my daughter and nephew

Before my mom, whose blog this is, passed away in 2014, she asked me to keep the site going if I could. "Maybe just once a month or so, I know how busy you are," she said. At this point in her life, with the end clearly in sight, she focused on spending time with loved ones, and not much else. Yet she used some of those precious last months on earth advocating for adoptees, and on making sure that we (her family) knew this was important to her. It was not one of the things that no longer mattered. It mattered. It still does. This month, I'd like to share some of my mom's own words. This is the letter she wrote, in 2003, to her original mother. Several years before, she had been diagnosed with Stage 2 malignant melanoma and had thus begun the search for her biological family at the recommendation of my sister, a doctor. The adoption agency in Trenton, NJ that had placed her contacted her original mother for her. She was not allowed to contact her herself (something that she found deeply offensive). Her mother told the social worker that she wanted no contact. That was the end of the story, for a bit. Eventually, my mom found her mother through an "enlightened individual" and sent her this letter. Being able to do so was crucial in her own journey as an adoptee. As readers of this blog know, my mom eventually found so much more, perhaps miraculously (we thought so), but it shouldn't take a miracle to find those we are related to by blood. Here is her letter.

September 19th, 2003

Dear Mrs. ______________,

I am writing this letter in the hope that you will be able to share just a little health and personal information with me about my genetic past. I am the little girl, now a middle-aged woman, whom you gave up for adoption 53 years ago. I want to assure you right up front that I have no need to meet you face-to-face and that I will never call you or come knocking on your door. I try to live my life according to the maxim "Do no harm," and for that reason, I thought long and hard about locating you privately and delivering this letter. (The agency was true to their word and would not release any information or forward this contact to you). I am doing this because I have a great need for healing and closure in this area, and I need to communicate with you, just this once, in my own words.

Perhaps the communication from the social worker at the Children's Home Society may have shocked and scared you. In a way, their letters scared me because they were so bureaucratic and impersonal, and really, this is such a personal event, fraught with emotion. I know that I will feel a much more satisfactory sense of closure by delivering this message to you personally via this letter. Please understand that I have no desire to hurt you in any way. I am so grateful for my life, and I imagine that this chapter in your life was absolutely excruciating.

All through life, I was curious to know something about my genetic past (which I believe is a very natural inclination for all of us, however loving our adoptive families), but my desire to know more intensified six years ago when I had a very scary bout with malignant melanoma. This experience included a life-threatening diagnosis, surgery, and numerous follow-up exams. Of course, all the doctors wanted to know my medical history, and I had nothing to tell them. Also, my older daughter is a physician, and she too was eager to know my genetic medical history. So much of what doctors study today are genetic links to disease.

Because we know without a doubt today that both genetic and environmental factors contribute to who a person is, I feel a definite sense of loss not having any information at all about the people whose genes I carry. That's why I tried to initiate come contact through the Children's Home Society, because I felt in my mind that I was asking for so little. Perhaps for you, my life ended the day you signed the adoption papers. I, on the other hand, had a life-long fantasy that somewhere in the world was a woman who must have wondered, on my birthday and from time to time, where I was and how I was doing. The death of this fantasy hurt so much that I sobbed like a baby for a couple of days and went about my business with a knot in my stomach for weeks.

I have to believe that your decision to close off all contact was one of self-protection and that you certainly didn't mean to cause me so much pain. For this reason, I hope you will listen to my modest request with an open heart. If you can share some information, in just one letter, you would be giving me a gift beyond all measure, and perhaps we both can feel a sense of peace and closure about this long-ago chapter. Here's what I'm hoping you will be able to tell me.

1. Although I have a fine life outwardly (had loving adoptive parents; have an extremely kind husband and two daughters who have been and are incredible blessings; have interesting work as a writer and teacher), I have struggled since I was very young with intermittent bouts of depression. No one in my adoptive family did, and it took me a long time to figure out that my sad thoughts weren't part of some horrible personality flaw, just a physiological condition that can be controlled very well with mild antidepressants. I have been told that this condition could be a direct result of the closed adoption system itself, the result of a genetic predisposition, or a combination of the two things. Can you tell me - Is there any history of depression in my genetic past, either in you or in other birth relatives? Also, would you kindly fill out the enclosed medical form? Both my daughters and I would really like to have this information so that we can practice preventive medicine, and I've included a self-addressed envelope for your convenience.
2. Are you able to tell me anything at all about my birth father? I know that he is deceased, but I am interested in knowing who he was and what he was like, if it is not too painful for you to describe him. 
3.  For me, the greatest gift you could give me if a photo of yourself -- as a young girl, and as a young or middle-aged woman. It is a very odd thing to go through life having no physical similarities to all the people around you. I have a strong desire to know whether I look like you or other birth relatives. Again, I'm not looking to hurt anyone -- it's just that I feel my genetic make-up is an integral part of who I am, and I need some information to fill in the empty places. 
4. Is your daughter, born in 1945, still living, and does she know that I exist? You may be aware that after your death, I do have the right to contact her through the Children's Home Society. I do not want to hurt you, so it would be helpful for me to know whether or not she knows I exist. 

I know that back in the days of my adoption, social workers counseled you that secrecy was best. Now, the thinking among adoption professionals has changed, and I am sure this is very frustrating for you. But we know so much more today about genetic links to disease and behavior, and without more complete background information, adult adoptees like me are stumbling in the dark in some ways. Again, I do promise that I will never come knocking at your door. I bear you no ill will. I am a good and sensitive person, a person of integrity. Perhaps I'm hoping to hear that you could have loved me had I been born in a different time -- a time in which out-of-wedlock pregnancies weren't so impossible and when society's rules were not so oppressive. You may be unable to do this, but please -- please don't refuse my request for background information just because I represent a painful episode in your life. Like so many adult adoptees, I simply have a need for some health information and for some knowledge about how I came to be. I know intellectually that my birth and your situation at the time must have been impossible for you, and I need you to know that your choice to give me life has been good for me, even though I feel I missed something, not knowing you.

There are other people in my life whom I love dearly and who love me too. I am not looking for a new family, just the information that I've requested. I pray that God will open your heart and that you are capable of giving me this one gift. I don't know you, but I believe that I can feel your pain and I am sorry for being the cause of that. I hope you can overcome it for the space of just one brief letter. Thank you for reading this letter, thank you for my life, and may God bless you for the rest of your days.

                                                                                        With hope and peace,

                                                                                         Susan Perry


P.S. I pray that you are able to share just a little in one letter and that you will. My address is ... Woodland Ave., Haddonfield, NJ 08033.  If you can do nothing else, I would so appreciate the updated medical information and photographs. I believe, if I had to, I could secure comprehensive medical records through legal action, but I don't want to take that route. You are not my enemy, and I do not wish to intrude on your life any further.

January 9th, 2017: Opening Day in New Jersey

This is the cover of a book I gave to my mom's sisters -- the ones she finally found when she was 63 years old -- two years ago. My mom had passed away the year before, having only known her sisters for eight months, but their bond was deep, and our bond continues. The book was simply photocopies of my mom's journal from when she was 13 years old, allowing her sisters a glimpse into her life, into the years they missed together.

My mom's life was a happy one, as maybe you can tell from these few photos (and isn't she cute? I love her sweet face in the photo on the right), but like many adoptees, she also had a bone-deep need to know her roots, and a persistent hope, one she couldn't even admit to herself until actually reunited with her sisters, for a connection to these roots. She spoke out about this for the last 15 years of her life, and even in those last months, when all other things by necessity had to fall away, she continued to fight for adoptees' rights to know their identities (or at least try to know without government interference).

That is why my heart is so full tonight, and why it will be so difficult for me not to be in Trenton, New Jersey tomorrow for the celebration of "Opening Day" along with the many other advocates who fought so hard for this right over the years. Pam Hasagawa, the leader of NJCARE, the organization with which my mom was involved, has tirelessly persevered for more than three decades in order to see this day. (Click HERE to read more about Pam). My mom often spoke about Pam's incredible integrity, and I have seen her faith and strength myself. I am so happy for her. My mom's brother (with her in three of the pictures above) and my dad will also be in Trenton tomorrow to celebrate, and to mark this occasion for my mom. It is so important.

If you are an adopted person from New Jersey, you can go to NJCARE's site for the paperwork to order your birth certificate (Click HERE).

In July of 2013, less than a week after she was diagnosed with stage 4 malignant melanoma, my mom wrote about adoption and what it had meant in her life. As she pondered adoptees' rights to know their full identities, she wondered if this day, Opening Day, would ever come. Reading her words again now, I am so heartened that it finally has.

Throughout my life, I have learned that the road to peace is never through falsehood, and I think that is the reason I have always felt so devoted to truth, fairness and social justice.

It is truly misguided and so very wrong for the state to attempt to block two grown adults from knowing the truth about each other's identity -- especially when those adults share such a deep, primal connection.  We cannot and should not ever block a human being's path to truth, peace, forgiveness and love.

I was told through the agency that placed me that my original mother did not want any contact with me.    With help from several enlightened souls, I found her on my own and sent her a sensitive and compassionate certified letter, asking her also for medical history.  As a human being facing a medical crisis 16 years ago, I felt that I was worthy enough to at least ask for information.  I received it, and eventually my original mother told me over the telephone that she had always loved me "in her heart."  Not every adopted person will seek out her original parents or get even that far in the journey.  Some will get further.

But how dare the state block the possibility for that love to be expressed?  How dare they?  Let people -- adults with minds and souls of their own -- find their own way.  Facing a critical illness at the moment, I can tell you with certainty that there is nothing that is more important than love.  Nothing.  Please, let's let the light, the truth and the love overcome the misguided fears and the ideology. 

Congratulations to all those who have fought so hard for this light, truth, and love. May it surround you tomorrow as you celebrate, and may it continue to grow for us all.