All Things Kerflooey

This was one of the first posts I blogged, but it got some negative reaction so…I took it down. I was ashamed of my anger. At the time I was thinking I hated being fat, when truthfully it is plain that what I was hating is all the shaming that is done to fat people. So, two years later, I proudly re-post my rant. It’s not a masterpiece of writing but it’s mine. Thanks Golda!

I think one of the worst things socially that you can be in America is fat. I should know; I’ve been fat, on and off, my whole life. I have a wide butt and a belly and flabby arms. I was a chubby, roly-poly baby – you can see it plainly in my baby pics. Because I’m adopted and was adopted in the age where everything was hush-hush, I never knew what my birth weight was. If I’d had to guess, I would have said 22 pounds. But when I finally procured some facts about my birth (by having to pay a ridiculous amount of money to the adoption agency that had already made a ridiculous amount of money off me as a baby – they never quite finish finding a way to profit from the babies they sell…but that’s another story), I learned I was of average birth weight; around 8 pounds if I remember correctly. Which led me to wonder of the foster parents who cared for me the first three months of my life, “What the hell did those guys feed me, anyway?”

I have photos of me as a toddler where I look pretty normal, and even my kindergarten-aged pictures show me to be just another kid, knobby knees and all. But by the time I had reached the earlier grades, there was unmistakable extra baby fat, and by the time I was in fourth grade, I already looked much older than my age because I was bigger than most of my peers. These are things it’s painful to talk about.

It’s strange, you know, that when you are fat, everyone can see it but you can’t talk about it. You could be a thin person and have cancer or herpes or be a woman who buries batches of kittens alive, or maybe even a sociopath who mistakes children for kittens and has batches of them at a time on the national news, and people might not care…or if they do, they at least agree you look good. But when you’re fat, you invite derision from total strangers. It becomes the focal point of your existance on Earth. “You know: her…the fat one.” It wouldn’t matter if the fat girl were more saintly than Mother Theresa, or found the cure for all known diseases; she’s still “the fat one.” It’s the fatal flaw, the one we’re all trained to be repulsed by.

Fat has gone beyond a physical condition in society’s mind; it’s a state of being. It’s laziness. Sloth. Self-indulgence to the highest degree, and when we see very fat people around us or on television, we assume the worst about them. It’s literally a disease, and one they speak of on the news as if it’s worse than AIDS or colon cancer. “The Obesity Epidemic,” the anchor man spits out as if he’s found a wad of pork gristle rolling around in his mouth somewhere. Those damn obesity-carriers. Don’t stand too close or you might catch it.

 And now even cultured, high-minded people seem to feel they have been given the permission to say derogatory things about overweight people. “Why don’t they just exercise, for Christ’s sake?” “I’d rather die than look like that; they must have a mental illness that makes them want to live that way.” Well, maybe. It does have a lot to do with the mind. And it becomes tangled up so tightly with everything you are about. When it’s what you look at every day in the mirror, what you know people see, what embarrasses you, frustrates you, makes you hold back and walk and talk small, causes you dread in social situations…even Oprah can barely acknowledge it, unless she’s either on a new diet or has lost some of the weight already.

I remember commenting to a girlfriend years ago when I was slimmer but still unhappy with my body that you see women all the time in ladies’ rooms examining themselves in the mirror over the sinks, tugging on their clothes, twisting and turning and craning their necks to get views of their sides and behinds, and saying, “God, I’m getting so fat!” These women are usually all size 10 and under. Fat people don’t do that. We might check to make sure our hair looks all right and that we don’t have a crust of lipstick in our teeth or any eye boogers, but we spend as little time in front of a public mirror as possible. We don’t want people to witness us witnessing ourselves. We wash our hands and hurry out the door to resume our role as scapegoats for the self-hatred everyone else feels but can’t express. I hate being fat. But is that enough for you?

Is it enough for you to know that I want to be thin?  As if being thin would give me permission to be a crappy, bitchy, mean-spirited person as much as I want to be a self-depricating, giving, generous person, and not have it attributed to my body size? I want to sit in a restaurant not feel self-conscious about ordering regular food instead of a carrot wrapped in a leaf of spinach with water dressing on the side so that no one, NO one, will come up to me and give me the diet advice they just know I’ve been dying to hear. Oh, really? Eat less, excercise more? Wow, revolutionary. I want, I want. Isn’t that the whole problem? We all want so very much…too much. We can never have all we want, can we? And I fear I may feel I don’t deserve to have most of what I want. So I feed myself too much and are never satisfied, but at least then I can want something morally and socially acceptable; indeed, esteemed: a thin body. Are you reading this and feeling angry at me? Are you wondering why I don’t just go on a diet and start an exercise routine and stop whining? Then I invite you to investigate your own feelings and see down which paths your psyche leads you. Oh, and by the way, I also invite you to kiss my ass…no matter what size it is.

Great bunches of beautiful wools and silks!! What SHALL I do with them?

Halloween has always been a favorite of mine. Not because I’m so obsessed with the macabre…no, I just like the dark, magical and colorful world of Trick or Treating, and the idea that Halloween is one holiday – or occassion – where adults can be kids again…I mean really kids – not silly Christmas-Gimme selfishness or self-indulgence, but really let-your-hair-down and live-out-a-fantasy-no-matter-how-whimsical-ness.  Plus, orange, black and purple – signature colors of Halloween – are all favorites of mine.

My strongest Halloween memory: dressed up to go to a 4-H Halloween party when I was about ten, and my little brother Darrin wanted to go SOOOO badly, too, but he couldn’t because he wasn’t “in 4-H yet. So as my dad is driving me out of the yard to the party, my brother comes running out in the dark, crying, wearing a Sleeping Beauty mask and costume he’d found in the garage: “See? I’m dressed in a costume! Let me go!” I can’t forget the image of him through the rear window of the car as we drove away, running after the car in that silly mask. It kinda breaks my heart, still.

Usually, Paul and I go to a party or out with friends Halloween night, and then we come home and dress up the doggies. Wierd maybe, but we love it. We didn’t do that this year; instead we had a party at our place. We wanted it in the shop but it wound up being in our house, and that was fine. We kept the lighting dim, hung orange and white paper lanterns, threw some purple twinkle lights here and there, lit some jack o’lanterns (Paul went crazy with the pumpkin carving), and all in all, it was lovely. Of course, I didn’t think to take photos of any of the ambiance, just our guests in their costumes. It was a blast.

Paul outdid himself and trannied himself up in Dr. Frankenfurter garb. It was a last minute decision on his part; we had been thinking of Edward and Bella. The challenging part was finding/making a last-minute outfit that was corset-y but gave him some coverage, so to speak. I think we did okay. The girls loved him!

For letting me take these gorgeous photos of you before your wedding day. What a beautiful woman you are…

Well. This has been such a crazy summer that I took some time off from writing much of anything since April. Now here it is, Fall. First, a little seasonal eye-candy; these photos were taken by me on a sunny work-day on the campus of my workplace.

I don’t remember the last time I saw such vibrant foilage.

There. Now. I think the last thing I was writing here was a bit of a rant about adoptee-rights…or the lack thereof. At the time I was feeling really peeved about the denial of my civil rights thanks to the help of  hopelessly out-of-date adoption law in Minnesota and the lobbying of such entities that evidently know better than I what is good for me. Obviously I still have feelings about this and will continue to have feelings about this. However, my April writings opened a new paradigm for me. Until then, I was adamantly opposed to having to pay for information that should be rightfully mine to begin with…but when I was able to step back and take a look at the situation, I did begin to feel that if money was the only way I could regain control of my history, then I had the money to do so. In short, I paid a company to find my birth information and give me the name, etc, of my biological mother. It cost an arm and a leg, but I intend to retrieve the $ spent when we adoptees in MN win our class action lawsuit against the state and adoption agencies.  I’m only being half-sarcastic here.

Amazing; it took only a few hours for them to complete my case, and there it was: the answer I’d been looking for for decades. I had my mother’s name, her last address, her phone number…it knocked me off my feet, let me tell you. When I felt ready, I wrote her a letter and held my breath. This was in late April.

Meantime, I readied myself for surgery. I needed to have a hysterectomy because of some massive fibroids and a whole lot of menstrual pain and non-sense that had gone on far too long. May fifth was the day. Yeah, I was a little scared, but the surgical staff took good care of me. In the post-op recovery room, my surgeon and staff were teasing me about how I’d go down a pants-size, the uterus had been so large. In my morphine high, everything was blurry, and I thought they’d told me they’d had to take my ovaries, too, but that wasn’t so. I’m glad about that. The pain was…interesting. But I suffered more from not being able to move my bowels (God, I never thought I’d be saying this)…the cramping was terrible and everything we tried to assist me with the task just backfired. Ugh. Anyway, was in the hospital about two and a half days. Here’s part of what they took out of me…

Paul and I refer to it as our Alien Love Child. It is fabulouso not to have to deal with those uber-painful periods and all the complications from them every month. Best thing I ever did, health-wise.

On May 18, I heard back from my biological mother by email. What a day. It’s strange how these life-changing things just happen, and you go with it. Since first hearing from her, we’ve emailed back and forth pretty consistently and talked on the phone. Paul and I flew out to Colorado the weekend of September 17 to meet her and her boyfriend in person. It was a fabulous trip…our relationship feels very natural and I truly, truly am deeply fond of her. I was thinking about how strange it is that you can miss someone your entire life and not know it until you meet them. But that’s so.

I’ll put just this one photo of us up…

When I returned home from my big trip, I decided to see about my biological Dad. It wasn’t too hard to find him – I had his name now. He died in 1979, and although I’m SO sad I’ll never know him, I did get in contact with his family (so far, one of his sisters and one of his nephews) and have already gotten a few family pics. I’m eagerly anticipating moving this new relationship along, learning more…

I do have three half-sisters on my dad’s side…wonder if I’ll ever meet them?

Crazy huh? That’s been my summer. Fall is settling in and I’ve gotten my knitting needles out ready to create…and an itch to put paint brushes to canvas, too. Paul got his creativity on and produced a pretty awesome painting…I’ll snap a pic and post it.

Life is good, thanks for being by my side through lots of it….

This blog is automatically fed to my Facebook profile. As a result, yesterday I received several comments to the FB posting of “Special, Chosen and Lucky…and the Language of Denial,” both in the form of FB comments and personal emails. I want to thank everyone who did comment or contact me. I appreciate your presence in my life.

I found myself, however, feeling a little horrified that it seemed I was being misunderstood by a few readers, until I realized this: it’s not necessarily what I said or how I said it; it is – once again – the public and accepted misconceptions – influencing how readers who come across op-eds such as mine interpret what we are saying. So I’m going to clarify here. What I say isn’t meant to be defensive to any talking points. I simply, truly believe it’s important for me to be absolutely clear about the what I am saying.

Firstly, I would like it understood that I don’t feel like “less of a person” because of the fact that I was adopted. My “S,C, &L” post was in part to point out that such pre-conceptions of adoptees by the general public, and words such as “special,” “chosen,” and “lucky,” are terms of condescension, intentional or not. In other words, what many adopted persons hear when we hear these words is that special terms must be applied to us to make our circumstances acceptable and even magical. As an intelligent adult, I reject that premise, and I ask those wishing to frame another person’s circumstances in those terms to spend some introspection on what it is they are truly saying, and more importantly, the feelings behind the words. Would it be surprising to find some feelings of patronization?

I think the core of the matter is this: adults adopted as children from my generation, who are well-educated about the facts and circumstances behind adoptions in that time, know that their relinquishment to social services or adoption agencies were most likely the result of the coersive influence of social stigma and the influence of agencies that stood to profit from that relinquishment. Because an unmarried woman with a baby basically had little or no chance of thriving in a society that viewed such a demographic as unacceptable, she therefore faced innumerable roadblocks.

It is a fact that single women who were pregnant in those times  were witheld social privilidges. For instance, they were expelled from high school and college. They were not allowed to be seen in church. They were denied jobs. They and their families were ostracized in public, and often the family would join in on the ostracization of the pregnant woman, out of outrage for the damage done to their social stigma. Many women were either literally hidden away in their family’s home or sent away to “maternity homes” or an isolated relative/family friend to be “put out of sight” of society until the baby could be removed.

These unfortunate women were more often than not given over to the hands of social services or adoption agencies who further coerced the surrender of the unborn child by reinforcing that it was the only “responsible, loving choice” for the child and for the unwed mother’s family. Often young women were threatened with hefty hospital and pre-natal care bills for which they had no resources to pay, should they change their mind and decide to keep the baby. And yes, there are cases when the baby was simply physically taken away after delivery and the mother forced to sign relinquishment papers before she could be released to leave.

How, you might wonder, was this allowed to happen? Because of the social stigma against women “caught” having sex outside of marriage (slut, low moral character, etc). Because of inequality of societal norms for men and women. Because adoption agencies that stood to make plenty of money from the situation handled things on the fringes of society’s vision, and made everything pretty and justified. “No woman of such low moral character should raise a child on their own, nor are they even capable. That child deserves better…they deserve two loving parents in a stable home.” Which was accepted and believed by society at large and forced upon the mother-to-be as a grim reality. She was coerced into thinking, in other words, that relinquishing her child was the ONLY responsible, loving option as well as the only feasible option, given that society had made it so incredibly difficult for a single mother in those times to survive. “Do what’s right for the child….and then after it’s all done, you can go back to your life and everything will be normal.” This was the lie forced down thousands of women’s throats. This was the lie that to this day, many surrendering mothers from that era are living with, in addition to the extreme pyschological pain caused by the forced denial of one’s human rights and motherly choices. There was no choice back then.

Social services and agencies took care of everything. Society did not need to extend its forgiveness, its compassion for women pregnant outside of marriage, nor did it need to lift a finger to help with the situation. In doing so, society allowed decades of children to be removed from their biological mothers and sold to two-parent homes that had the money to buy their own children.

Understandably, this is not something that we as American society at large is ready to own up to. Just as we have buried the injustices we have done to indigent Americans and to those brought by force to America in slavery and the subsequent generations, we cannot quite seem to admit we are more than willing to play along with games that made sticky ethical issues easier, despite the consequences to other human beings.

So I reiterate: my feelings of anger are not caused by a biological parent “rejecting me.” I have righteous anger against a system that took away my human rights as a child born in America, and that continues to withhold those rights from me to this very day. My right to my birth certificate. My right to know the truthful circumstances of my origins. My right to claim my own heritage, my own name.

Did you know that birth certificates given to adoptees of my generation are “amended”  with only the name of the adoptive parents? Often the name of the hospital, the time, etc., are excluded or are changed. Sometimes even dates and times of birth are changed. My real birth certificate, my history, my origins are still hostage of this state and also of the adoption agency who profitted from my birth and continues to profit from my requests for information by charging me for information that rightfully belong to me.

We have been told that the secrecy that surrounded adoptions until the mid-eighties in Minnesota was out of necessity to integrate the child fully into the adoptive family and to ensure the privacy of both the adoptive family and the biological parents. But underneath that veneer lurks the truth: the travesty of society taking possession of children belonging to women who were choiceless and helpless to help themselves or their unborn children, and selling them for profit to families with acceptable social status and income. The violation of the human rights of both the biological mother and father and the child itself. And the continued violation of these human rights after decades have passed and the child is now an adult.

Adoptees like myself, who have educated ourselves about  the adoption myth, insist on our rights being returned to us. We submit that we never consented to having our rights and our heritage stolen from us. We submit that the wrong done to us, and to society at large in our generations cannot be corrected, but that reparations can begin to be made when our rights are restored to us. We are asking – demanding – the return to us of what is rightfully ours.

And despite the alleged enlightenment of these times, we still face the same old challenges. We are defeated by the courts. We are defeated by failure of states to enact new legislation that will return to us what is ours – their decisions based on outdated societal thinking, unacknowledged prejudices, money from adoption agencies that profitted in the past from closed adoptions, and ignorance.  We are defeated – still – by lies and propaganda. And most discouragingly, we are defeated by the uninformed if not well-meaning patronization of society, who still insists on making us “special,” “chosen,” and most ironically: “lucky.” 

What I am is strong, a fighter, intelligent, introspective, talented, and enjoying a very happy life. The day I concede to being “lucky” in terms of my adoption is the day I regain what was rightfully mine in the first place, and then only because I will have been fortunate enough to have outlived society’s wrongs against adopted people.

I’d like to suggest that everyone read Ann Fessler’s “The Girls Who Went Away” for a clearer picture of the truthful situation in the pre-Roe v. Wade adoption years. If you don’t wish to take the time to read, you can listen to an interview by Terri Gross with Ann about her book on Fresh Air (NPR) here. 

In another post, I’ll provide some other resources, as well. I’ll also be posting this to my “Do You Know This Girl” adoption blog.

Since taking this photo in 2006, three of these little sweethearts have become Angels. We still love you, Tyler, CJ and Lettie-Belle.

Me with my adoptive parents on the day of my adoption

I am an adopted child. I have known this since I was about ten years old. My little grandma let it slip, in her senility. Had she not, I’m not certain how long the conspiracy to keep me in the dark about my birth origins would have gone on. I am thinking that because I always had feelings of “otherness” from the rest of my family, I would have eventually figured it out. And if not, it definately would have become clear when I got a hold of the packet of papers my dad passed to my husband – not me – back about fifteen years ago. Yep, those were my “papers.” Sort of like an AKC pedigree. My amended birth certificate, my adoption decree, etc. So. Anyway…

Second, if you are the adoptive parent of an adopted child, you may be offended by what I write. No offense intended; I’m coming at this whole situation from a different angle than you are…but it might pay for you to have a nodding acquaintence with the “other sides” of the adoption triad, too. Knowledge is power. Also, I’m not questioning your love for your adopted child or your ability to parent. That must speak for itself.

Third, the truth is, for many of us who are adopted and denied our rightful birth history, there are conflicting feelings. Our adoptive family is the only family we know, and we love them. Most of us can easily imagine the happiness and excitement we caused in our adoptive family’s life when we came to them. Most us are happy we’re alive; we’re well-adjusted human beings who lead rich lives, and we are grateful for all that we have. But this isn’t about ingratitude. It’s about truth. The truth is, it’s a denial of our worth to be told condescending things about a situation that is undeniably resounding and was and is beyond our control. The truth is, it’s a denial of our human rights to bury our pasts and then put the burden on us to adjust according to social standards. The truth is, it’s selfish to the extreme to perpetuate fairy-tale myths of adoption instead of acknowledging reality. The truth is, meaningless words mean little to us, even as children, or worse, they may expose a pain as deep as our tender, human souls. Should we tell you that you are “Lucky” to be born with only one head instead of two? Would you like to hear, upon learning of a terminal health condition that you are “Special?” If you are assaulted, was it because you were “Chosen?”

It took decades for me to be able to give a voice to my feelings about being an adopted person. Society tells us we should be grateful. That we should only speak to the positives. Society further disempowers adoptees by insisting that our lives are better off than they would have been, and that is that. I applaud every single member of the adoption triad – the adopted, the adoptive, and the surrendering biological parent – who is unafraid to speak to their truth about their experiences.

The following came through an adoption triad support group email list.

Special, Chosen and Lucky

by Joe Soll, LCSW, DAPA, author of Adoption Healing… a path to recovery,
and Co-author of Evil Exchange and Fatal Flight

How many times do we adoptees hear those three words?

They are presumably said with all good intentions, what goes on inside us
when we hear them?

If I am special, do I have to follow the rules?

If I am chosen, did I come from a baby supermarket? Why did they pick me?

If I am lucky, what makes me so?

If I am special, why was I available to be chosen?

If I was chosen, did someone unchoose me first?

If I am lucky, why do I hurt so much inside?

If I am special, why does it not feel good when I hear it?

If I am chosen, who were the other contestants?

If am lucky, does that mean my first family was “bad” in some way?

Each time someone says either of those words, it is a reminder that we are
adopted. The intent is to make us feel good, not hurt, not think about our
natural mothers. Yet each time we hear these words, how can we not on some
level think of where we came from? It’s like telling us to not think of
pink elephants. Each time we hear the words it causes us internal pain. We
may not be conscious of it, but it has to be there.

The reason why we adoptees do so much day-dreaming (which to the uninformed
mental health professionals looks like ADD) is because we are constantly (at
least unconsciously) trying to figure it all out. Who and why are the
biggest unanswered questions and our minds struggle to understand what no
one can or will tell us.

There are phobic and counterphobic reactions to pain and fear.

The phobic adoptee tells no one they are adopted.

The counterphobe flaunts being adopted, tells others how special she or he
is.

In reality, the loss of our mothers at birth was a trauma of the highest
order that is worse than the horrors of war. (Anna Freud) Each time we hear
those three words that trauma is stirred up. When we are separated from our
mothers we experience their death. There is no difference in losing a mother
to death or adoption. Mommy is here, mommy is gone. Poof! Death as far as
the infant’s experience goes.

If we are special, does that mean it is good to lose a mom?

If we are chosen, does that mean our parents took us from our mothers on
purpose

If we are lucky, does that mean we are lucky our mothers are dead for us?

I like to throw away words that hurt, like the “R” word… Rejection

Maybe we should throw these three words away as well.

Spread the word, throw out “S”, “C” and “L” because they are not what they
say they are

Gotta find this cookie cutter!

I have loved New Orleans since I was a little girl…but never got there until last year. Go figure. But I’m fairly certain it will be my home away from home some day soon. Excited to see this series premiering this Sunday.