NaBloPoMo Day 3: Blogging Adoption and Everyday Life

Today we’re continuing with Day 3 of NaBloPoMo here on Lost Daughters and the subject today is Blogging Adoption and Everyday Life.

 

The question posed to me as the writer assigned to this post is: How is blogging about adoption different from blogging about other topics? Do you maintain an non-adoption blog on top of adoption blogging? If so, how do they differ?

 

I have maintained a blog for the past seven years where I write daily. That blog is not  adoption related, at all. 

I have only recently started writing about adoption, and it has been an emotional rollercoaster ride to get here.  I have typed this post through my tears and come back to edit and polish it, and I realize I have verbally bled all over my computer.  I am thankful for the safe place Lost Daughters provides to share all of this.

 If you would had told me last year that I would be writing about adoption at Lost Daughters, or anywhere, I would have said you were crazy. Writing about adoption was the furthest thing from my mind, for several reasons -- the first of which was fear that had me in it's ugly grip. In this post I will tell you why, and the changes that have taken place since then, in what has become the longest blog post I've ever written. :) 

What has and has not happened…

Adoption = Perfect Product Placement

By Trace A. DeMeyer (author-adoptee-blogger at American Indian Adoptees)

In south Chicago in the 1950s, my 22-year-old mother imagined my father, 28, would marry her since she was pregnant with me. That didn’t happen.

Did my birthmother’s family support her and allow her to keep me? That didn’t happen.

I was illegitimate but I wasn’t an orphan since I had two parents. Did the state contact my father and ask him to raise me?  No. That didn’t happen.

After an orphanage then foster care, the damage done in those months is not something I can describe in words but I only wanted to be with my natural mother. That didn’t happen.

The couple who adopted me had miscarried twice and I was supposed to be the replacement. I had my own DNA and my own ancestors but that didn’t matter. They expected me to be their lost child. That didn’t happen.

I was not supposed to question anything. When I decided I wanted to know who I was, what happened and why I was adopted, I asked my adoptive family for information and the truth. That didn’t happen.

The social worker convinced my mother I was better off with new parents who she never met. Did the social worker tell my mother I would be emotionally distraught, devastated and mentally damaged from being abandoned? No. That didn’t happen.

The church and the state were supposed to conduct interviews and home inspections. Did they find out my adoptive father was a raging alcoholic. Did they stop him from molesting me? No. That didn’t happen.

My natural mother probably thought the church and state and the social worker would protect me after adoption. Did the social worker check on me? No.  That didn’t happen.

Many of my adopted friends were sexually molested as teens by their adoptive fathers and other relatives. Will the adoption industry ever admit or release these statistics? No. That sadly isn’t happening.

The adoption industry peddles perfect product placement called babies to people who miscarried, some desperate to raise a child. Do they tell them babies are “blank slates” who will love them unconditionally? Yes. That does happen.

Trace blogs at www.splitfeathers.blogspot.com.  Her adoptee memoir "One Small Sacrifice" is available on Amazon and Kindle.