The Adult Adoptees Experience of Open Adoption
I don’t pretend to be an expert on open adoption because I did not relinquish Max to an open adoption.
In 1987, I had never heard the words “open adoption” and I do not think I did until I got online in 2001 and began the long painful progress of de-fogging or as I like to say “getting a strong dose of adoption truth anecdote to the all that birthmother Kool-aid I drank”. However, if you have been around long enough, I am sure you have heard me say that I do believe open adoption is still a social experiment. While “better” than a closed adoption, we will not really know if it is a successful social experiment or just a repackage version or different issues UNTIL the ADOPTEES raised on open adoptions have grown up, found their voices and started telling us.
That is the basis that we must judge open adoption on; how it works for the adopted children who lived it
The Open Adoption Adoptees Are Growing Up
Before I met Kat, oldest open adoption adoptee that I knew of was Brenda Romanchiks’s son who just turned 29. ( Shout out for Adoptees Running for Office! ) While Brenda has always been a strong voice in adoption and speaks highly of the situation being the best that it could, I don’t think I have ever found where he talks about how the open adoption worked for him. ( please feel free to correct me if I am wrong!!)
One of my high points of the 2010 Adoptee Rights Demonstration in Louisville Kentucky was meeting Nikki who was born just months after my Max in 1988 and had a pretty open adoption her whole life. Listening to Nikki talk about her open adoption experience did confirm my belief that open adoptions, while again, still preferred over the closed adoptions, did bring with them a whole new slew of issues and concerns that the adoption industry was happy to glance over and ignore while promoting open adoptions to both adoptive parents and expectant birthmothers considering adoption. Granted Nikki had a very extreme story with tons of adoption all over her biological and adoptive families, but none of that negated her feelings which were very real and valid and most of all her truth.
Before that, one of the greatest insights we, in AdoptionLand, had regarding the adoptee experience in an open adoption was the “Pink Bubbler Open Adoption Experiment” which also strongly cemented my own personal point of view about the truthful understanding of the open adoption story from the adult adoptee’s point of view. Still, it was one story and only one adoptee’s feelings; we need more.
Time to Listen to the Adult Adoptees about Open Adoptions
The time has come.
I got to met Kat when I was down in Atlanta for the 2013 Adoptee Rights Demonstration and many of you might (or should) know her from her wonderful raw, heartfelt blog, Sisterwish.com. What is very remarkable to me is that Kat is an adult adoptee blogging about her personal experience in an open adoption.
A few weeks ago she asked me about some help with SEO regarding creating a new blog specifically on open adoption and to target expectant moms considering open adoptions. As I have been saying that I do really want to open up MOTL more as platform for All of us in AdoptionLand, my response was to ask her if she would be willing to add her voice as an adult adoptee from an open adoption here. The added bonus is that Musings of the Lame already holds key search rankings in regard to adoption and has a following, so getting the word out to the masses and on the search engines would be much easier on an already established adoption blog. I’m a kill two birds with one stone and why reinvent the wheel kind of girl.
Judge the Open Adoption Experience through the Open Adoption Stories;
So with that, I am thrilled to welcome Kat here on Musings of the Lame and to create a whole new category of Adoption Truths; the Open Adoption Stories. Kat was born in 1972 and that makes her the oldest open adoption adoptee I know of with 40 years under her belt and a full range of adult experiences to be able to process her open adoption through. Most of the other open adoptees are just hitting their 20’s or so now? We have a full 20 years to wait to hear from them as adults who have fully begun to process their baggage and understand it themselves. In other words, we can listen to Kat now, or ignore her and hear hundreds of other adoptees say the same things in 20 years or so.
With the start of the 2013 National Adoption Awareness Month, I can think of nothing more fitting that to say yes, let us become aware of what adoption means the children that have grown up in adoption; closed adoptions, opens adoptions, needed adoptions, forced adoptions, discriminated, denied, reunioned, rejected, rejoiced, wounded or foggy; let us be aware of their truth, their adoption stories, for that is what we must judge adoption by.
Not what we want it to be. Not what we hope it will be Not what we pretend it should be. Not what the adoption industry tells us it is, but by what the children who lived know it to be. They are not children any more and we must hear them as the true and only ‘experts; fit to judge the open adoption experience. Kat shall lead the way.
Are you an Adoptee from an Open Adoption? AdoptionLand is waiting to hear your point of view. Please, feel free to send MOTL your open adoption stories and we will post them here. We can give you credit or keep you unknown; whatever works for you.
This is exciting and wonderful news. I only came across Kat’s Sisterwish blog recently. I’m one year older than Kat, but mine was a closed adoption. Reading Kat’s blog has just confirmed my feelings that open adoption comes with its own set of issues.
(A small note: When I click on “Kat here on Musings of the Lame”, I get re-directed to a “Oh Crap! I can’t find that!” page.)
I think that when we talk about open adoption, we should distinguish between “contact” and “openness.” They are not one and the same, although I believe historically we may have conflated the two.
http://lavenderluz.com/2013/01/open-adoption-grid.html
Glad to have Kat here. I’ll be reading.
Oh, and I recently came across another account of someone who is being raised in an open adoption (looks like she’s 17). In addition to contact, it sounds like there has also been open-heartedness from her parents (both sets): http://www.mlive.com/rockford/index.ssf/2013/10/open_adoption_allows_cedar_spr.html
That’s a good distinction to remember it can make all the difference!
Lori, That is such a great point! So as expectant moms are contemplating placing their child in open adoption, there are many aspects to consider. Finding a family that is willing to have contact may be difficult. (We are all aware that adoptive parents may close the adoption at any point in most states as is pointed out in the article you mentioned) Finding a family that is willing to have openness – meaning a constant flow of communication that is “open” and inviting for the well being of the child may be even more remote in possibility.
It is important for those who are contemplating placing their baby in an open adoption be aware of closed adoption, open adoption, contact and openness. It is also important to understand that all of these aspects of adoption is ultimately decided by the adoptive parents.
I love Kat’s work. When you read her work you can imagine yourself as her in those situations and how you would feel. It’s always well written and makes the reader think.
To me it’s a must read for adoptive parents and those thinking of pursuing adoption. Also, I think parents who are divorced and even those parents who aren’t could benefit from reading her work. The lessons to be learned are that a parents behavior and how they react to and in front of their children can have a big impact on their children.
Even though I have no experience in open adoption to me it means having an open relationship with the birth/first parents that goes beyond just contact. I think it also means that the adoptee lives in an open environment where they have a comfort level to ask questions and express (not repress) their feelings. I don’t think it’s ever perfect or means the adoptee can’t ever hurt. But it’s making the best of a less than ideal situation, IMO.