Luckily for me, for some unknown reason one of those people isn’t my mother. Or more importantly either of my mothers. They both know. They are both afraid to touch it but they both care. I know some incredible women who can’t say the same. It boggles my mind. How can you be so incredible and come from such a dysfunctional source? But they do and they are and I love them and think they are heroes. I mean really can’t say enough about them, they are incredible human loving beings who deserve as much love as anyone but have been of course harmed by the radical idea that yes, there isn’t an age where it is okay to abandon your child,there is just not, just because baby can’t say, “don’t leave me, the very idea terrifies me and makes me feel like I am going to die” Hello Primal Wound, I don’t give a shit what you call it, but yes, it is kind of common sense.

Oh and then coming back to this space think about the “Camilles” who have taken to their beds with smelling salts because I have said really mean things about them like, you have no right to speak for us, you are a bitch( ?) I may have thought that or wrote that, or you are a dismissive cunt, Idk, something like that, and from my understanding these precious bitches swooned and fell backwards on the very idea that someone could actually say NO to them, I mean that was all too much too take, right?

I mean worms do turn at times, gotta watch for that, and just because you want to be all dismissive and rude and say things like “angsty girls” just because someone is all, idk, butt-hurt because they lost their whole fucking identity and you think that is just all in good fun, or that they are imagining things or that you have the right to prove their own history wrong while at the same time YOU ATTEMPT TO SET YOURSELF UP AS EXPERT IN A SITUATION YOU DID NOT EXPERIENCE, TO DEGRADE THE VERY PEOPLE WHOSE WELL-BEING YOU PROMISED TO CARE FOR Then because some glow-worm like Winnie Churchill, like me, says no bitches fuck right off you faint.

Oh for God’s sake. Really, am finding myself somewhere between indifference and pity and disgust. I know Mirah tried to point out to me very kindly, and intellectually I do get her points.

Maybe it is regionalism and generation difference. I remember getting into one time with MAC-ATTACK, and her going on about the term “goody-two-shoes” and how it was a school-yard taunt. Not at my school honey. Goody-two-shoes would have actually referred to a very sexy Adam Ant song.

Is this a real video, did the 80s really happen?

Okay, so back to regionalisms, yes, no if you called someone a goody-two-shoes in my world, idk would have happened, the term we used was much more colorful, dick-shiner Yeah that is what we used in like second grade.

But I still can’t help but hold these precious and very fragile women up to wonder. It is okay for you to ridicule abandoned children but you are so very precious that you cannot stand to be criticized, you faint and fall away, you writhe and moan?

Well my dear little piggies, all I can say to you as how fortunate you are that life never handed you any real difficulties. If anyone thinks I haven’t been hated on, they are naive. Yup, have, irl too, since I was about 8, and lived through all of that, and the reason I was hated on had nothing to do with me ridiculing other’s deepest pain that I was charged with caring for or me getting money out of my child’s pain, just so you know, I mean, I know how horrible and frightening for you right?

So faint away bitches, faint away faux friends of adoptees, faint away faux experts.

We are the experts and you would never want to be us, there is no profit that would be worth the price we have paid. But stop humping our fucking legs, stop it. Oh I know I am the biggest bitch, but I am making the way for others by cutting the road.

No, No, No, we are not your worms, not your pets, we are actual people. Soylent Green (Adoptees) are people! Yes, you ask us to be nice, we have been, we were to MAC, to Jess, to Dawn, what did that get us, insulted, dismissed and ridiculed.

Sorry! Don’t have the self-esteem issues that most adoptees have and so fuck-you. Hey, you did it to me first, I gave you the opportunity to be decent, you rejected that. You should be ashamed, I am not. I am not.

Fuck your shaming and fuck you trying to own my experience and fuck you trying to be so precious and in control of *yes* this adoptee narrative. Faint bitches, faint, I am Rick James, lol.

Irl, I have a reputation for being unusually kind and reasonable. Very sweet. But I am the same person irl that I am here. Yup lose my shit in real life too, stick up for my interests in real life too, in the very Taurus, Ferdinand the bull fashion.

I am not being false.

In other news, staring at the sky a lot, sewing oh and wanted to post this video because all I really want to do is lie on my satin sheets and listen to Broken Social Scene and Thievery Corporation and bliss and feeling just like the Meatpuppets did when they made this:

I cannot see the end of me.

And so I listen to the most beautiful words ever:

when i was a kid, you fucked me in the ass
but i took my pen to paper and i passed
you know i love the shit cause the shit it tastes so good,
i got pastures waiting in the woods………
its all gonna break

I know some people will think that is crass and adolescent, but I could give a shit, I have every confidence in my aesthetic.

Choke on that experts, I will always be there for those trying to profit, I will always be there trying to not profit but fight for the voices behind the real issue. Choke on that.

“Why are you always fucking ghosts?”

Beauty:

Megan asked me a v. good question: So what is up with the blog about Campbell if you don’t care about her? (paraphrasing)

You know Megan that is a very good question and I asked that of myself. I am glad you brought it up as I have already done an auto-interview a la Nina Hagen and well don’t feel at liberty to repeat, I do try to be entertaining as well as sincere.

For those that have the eyes to see it, they will. But yeah, as long as I have a breath in my body, you are not going to mock an adoptee for their own experience and I will sit idly by. Even if you are an adoptee.

Oh and you know how I like to link songs because yes, fun music, yay happiness. I have no idea why I want to link this song it reminds me of my first divorce. It reminds me of college where I told annoying boy that I liked this band and he told me that Rolling Stone rated them really bad. I said, “Oh I don’t read Rolling Stone” and smiled and then he got even pissier because he thought I was being all, I am way cooler than you and don’t read Rolling Stone. h8trs gonna h8t. Maybe I can’t believe how people I thought were my friends had such little regard for my well-being and such investment in their righteousness? Who knows? Not me.

Maybe I will disappear now you can always hope!

But as I understand it it MAC and Jess have taken to their beds like Camille reaching for their smelling salts because they feel they have every right to dismiss adoptees and ridicule them. How dare I give them a taste of their own medicine? How dare I?

And really it is not even a taste of their own medicine, I am not ridiculing the biggest pain of their lives, I am just ridiculing how they talk to us which makes them faint into a pool of self-pity. Boy their lives must be hard. Oh and I did make fun a little of the silly articles I saw Jess write on-line, apparently help for parents who are brain-dead, try taking your kid to a park? Oh thanks Jess, what is a park? I mean srsly. How is that not just anger against tree writing? I mean how is that not just the desire to kill more trees writing?

Okay, but I am stopping even though I was thinking what about a museum? Is a museum a good idea Jess? The bulk of my complaint is totally mild and is about how rude and dismissive they are to us, but they are the ones fainting and carrying on and weeping. FFS, how pathetic. Well Rick James called me and said, look bitches if you don’t want some blow-back stop being such assholes. I would tell them, but then we would be in for a whole new round of retribution and reaching to include others.

So I will be making their names unsearchable. Bitches are lucky they aren’t adoptees, we have to put up with people ridiculing the most tender parts of ourselves not just your dilemma, someone ridiculing your perceived right to ridicule your own child’s pain, what fragile creatures you are. But don’t despair, will make your name unrecognizable Jess so you can still attempt to parlay your child’s pain into a career. Fab.

Gotta go, BigFoot is here, we are having a tupperware party.

Who people want me to be, the truth that is expedient is what is relevant. Thanks falsified birth certificate. I mean my state’s government was complicit in telling me, “Hey as far as you go, the truth, well that is what we find to be most palatable, not the actual truth-truth as in factual statements, we will go with the most expedient of lies” Oh and just for my protection from the stigma of adoption, in the state of California unlike my non-adopted peers, I am only eligible for the long-form birth certificate that takes six weeks to get instead of 10 minutes. It says amended right on it, was filed 18 months after I was born and doesn’t have parental signatures on it, so it saved me from nothing. Anyone seeing it could have recognized it didn’t look like the other kids and assumed my illegitimacy, because all adoptees are guessed to be bastards, so don’t feel bad if you aren’t a “real” bastard and your folks were married, you still got the stigma. You still represent, huzzah!

I internalized it wholly. I do want to mention one other weirdness though, I never wanted to lie to my own mother, for some reason I recognized her as this really valuable part of myself, I want to say extension, but it wasn’t extension so much as source, I wanted her to know the real me very badly, and I so wanted her validation and comfort.

Yes, I did internalize that truth meant expediency and not accuracy. It didn’t bother me consciously, I mean how could it? I embraced it. I reacted by splitting myself into different parts, different roles, with different language. I would think to a certain extent this is normal that we all do this, but I took it to an extreme. It is definitely effective.

I am thinking on these things as I was recently made aware that one of my IRL adoptee friends, that I do not know through activism or on-line is a pathological liar. He has made some people I care about v. angry. Which yeah, I can sympathize with them, I mean a friend shouldn’t be a part-time job. What I have held my tongue about though is, why wouldn’t he lie? The foundation of his identity is a lie. The gov’t condones the lying. How is he supposed to internalize that truth has a place in his life? The truth was so horrifying that it made people’s faces melt-off, to hear the NCFA tell it, in the vital records department, gumming up the whole system of wholeness because you know, sticky-melted-off-faces getting on everyone’s shoes.

I mean the government is only telling lies about me to protect me and protect the goodness of all the sugary goodness in candy-mountain because some things matter more than truth, chiefly those things being: easy. ‘Sorry, Joy, so can’t tell you who you are because that would be um, erm, awkward, surely you understand?’

Oh boy did I ever, I took that one on full-force. I was an early-bloomer in adolescence, which meant I got a lot of attention when I was still a child. Not uncommon, but pretty confusing. For the most part I liked it, I mean who wouldn’t like people wanting to buy you things and give you rides to places you wanted to go and in exchange all you had to do was not let them touch ‘your shoulder’ as one boy said about my breasts which I heard third-hand, ‘She is like a princess, she won’t even let you touch her…shoulder’ No, I wouldn’t, but I would let him buy me stuff. He could take me to concerts, he could buy me posters of you know, lol, Billy Idol. Oh God, true that.

Embarrassing but true. The more boys the more stuff, I would always have one main boyfriend and some back-ups when I was really young, I didn’t feel anything really for the boys at all. Until I met Tomtom’s father, when I was of the advanced age of 14, but even so, it took me a long time to trust him enough to let go of my old ways enough to engage in my real first relationship, although I had dated one guy for almost two years previously, that sounds v. mature to me now as a person who has parented but hey, it was the 80s. But you know there was A. and then my sides, which I never felt comfortable having just one boyfriend, always had to have back-ups at that age as I have noticed I tend to have two of almost everything.

But I loved Tomtom’s father so much, I left my previous life and joined his. I still had my bff but other than that, I ran around with his friends, so for the most part was the lone-girl in a group of miscreant boys. At this time, my drug-use had gone from experimentation-HA- to full-time job. Or at least part-time, there are so many mythologies about drug use, and I do not want to discount those who dealt with addiction on a much more difficult level than I did, lots of those people exist.

My experience on the other hand was not altogether pleasant, but not one I regret. Yes, there were bad times, fo shizzle, but a lot of it was as David Bowie said, “a real-life adventure, worth more than pieces of gold” It was in the drug-culture that I still recognize the gifts of my hyper-vigilance, the boys would always send me into situations that they were unsure of, I have always had a persona that screams “SWEET, INNOCENT!” which in a way is accurate. There are two stereotypes that I would say are absolutely true about drug culture while most are not, but this whole song: Waiting for My Man oh yeah, Lou knew, which I was listening to tons then, “First thing you learn is that you always gotta wait” Yeah, and there was always some bullshit, some agenda, not unlike adopto-land. Someone is misrepresenting their story, someone is lying, someone is trying to leverage, so they would send me in and I would b.s. and b.s.ing with druggies sucks because they always say the same thing, like 100 times a night, “Can’t bullshit a bullshitter” but that is all anyone does is bullshit bullshitters. That is what I did. I used to say, “Go for it!” all the time because I thought that was the most asinine comment ever but those fuckers never understood my irony.

In all my reconnaissance missions, all my girl-decoy missions, I didn’t have a miss. I really didn’t. My hyper vigilance paid off. I was so attuned to others motivations, still am. Which ironically deals directly with my profession. I was the same me then, I was protective. I saw such awful things. I thwarted a burglary once just because I have never been able to stand people getting physically hurt. I did it on purpose like it was a joke.

As soon as I did it, “my/our friend” Marc escorted me out of the house with my arm being pulled tightly up and against my back. He got me outside and told me, “If you weren’t BD’s girl I would fucking break your arm right now” he pulled my arm up against my neck for emphasis. I had no reason to doubt him, I had seen him bash a security guard in the head earlier that year, knock the poor guy unconscious because we were of all things, sneaking into a concert. I had yelled at him then too, “You Dick! That was so unnecessary!” He had pushed me forward then like he pushed me forward that night up on top of a cinder-block fence, I was forced to sit on the roof all night, still don’t quite get that. But yes, I was “covered in bruises from mixing with losers” Marc Almond.

There was another incident where we were all getting gacked-out and there was some poor young girl who was super dumb-ass and I don’t want to even think about what the boys were planning to do to her but I did know they took her keys. It took me about an hour and a half to get her keys back, to get her home and again, the only reason I had the power to do that is I was someone’s “girl” but yeah even as a druggie I challenged the status-quo. Good thing they weren’t like the “good women” I attacked in blogosphere for the innocent crime of being aggressors to the vulnerable. Oh wait, that would make them just like the aggressive and quite often unkind thugs I was running around with. Oh but they are…

So that all happened and much worse things that would curl your toes and make you say WTF? No, but yes, things like that happen. And then other things happen. You find yourself with a baby at college. You know, with all these kids who had lives you can’t relate to, who graduated from Tam High or San Rafael who are super-concerned about the lame and mistaken idea that they made up 4:20, who are super-wet behind the ears.

People and parties, and whatnot, and you find yourself looking at a young man at a party and he is asking you where you are from and you think, ‘What can I say that will shut him down the fastest?’ because you already know the true story of your true life is not acceptable. Ask the state of California. So you say, “I am from Missouri, I was raised on a cow farm” because you don’t want to hear that sound, like the sound of someone laying their finger on a vinyl record and drawing it across. No I wasn’t abandoned, no I wasn’t a Kentucky-child-bride, no I wasn’t a druggie, no I wasn’t unwanted, no I know my mother and she loves me vs. she doesn’t want the kids that she really loves to know about me.

No, I am just like you.

“What is your major?” he asks

I look at his shirt, it has a picture of a flower on it.

“Botany” I answer.

“You have never been to Missouri” he answers.

“Yes, yes I have” and I had.

I look out the window, I can see the street sign reading “Haight” a neighborhood I have never been far away from. But that is not the truth that will be most helpful to me in the moment, that is not the truth that will free me from blame. The truth of who I am does not matter, why should what I am telling this young man about myself matter at all?

Not to me, am adopted. When I was with HD after about 6 years I told him one time about my birth certificate, he didn’t believe me at first and despite being a highly educated person, exclaimed, “It is illegal to lie on government records!” Well not if you are us and what are adoptive parents as a class doing about it? Nothing.

I am not ashamed of what I did when I was a kid now, I have a lot of compassion and respect for what I did when I was a kid. I was not a MAC, I was tough, I was not a Jess, I was smart and recognized as smart, sometimes even lol a genius and heroin addict, sadly am not a genius and have never done heroin, but that was a rumor.

And yes the boys liked my smartness, the whole boys don’t like smart girls is such b.s. Maybe start trying to be more friendly and less smug? works for me.

Whatever, I lied happily at that point, all these things I had done were SO SCANDALOUS, Things I did: drugs, got married at 16, moved out at 15, gave birth at 18, oh yes I am such a bad person.

But I am not, I made a success of my life of my child’s life. MAC and Jess are reaching for their smelling salts because we are not allowing them to ridicule us. What have they done? What businesses do they run? Just curious? What experience do they have being adopted? Oh they are so hurt? Did their moms leave them? or are they just hurt that they don’t get to make fun of adoptees? I mean how rough for them. lol.

Let me escort you out of the house with your arm up against your neck, oh but you wouldn’t know about that would you? Oh I could use a lecture about how on line cruelty matters, except that it doesn’t matter to them, they were given lots of opportunities to retract but instead they went on the attack.

They know more about adoptees than adoptees do, and adoptees need to be humiliated and ridiculed if nothing else.

Sweeties, I have seen the big tough mafia in real life, seriously, I have seen real physical harm in real life. I have seen the result of MACs and Jess’s and their ilks on real adoptees who have blown their own heads off. Nope, don’t feel a bit sorry. The only sorrow I feel is for their souls. I am disgusted by them.

I used to listen to this song and think it was in my past, I think it is in my present. I have no apologies for rebelling against the cruel and stupid who fight against adoptee’s well-being. As I said before I can forgive the stupid OR the cruel; not both.

I want everyone reading this to know that there is nothing in my life that could happen that would make me more convinced of their evilness. Nothing. So here is my lovely song:

I really hope you self-righteous hags find yourself in the mirrors you deserve

Submitted on 2012/01/14 at 6:51 am
I watched this earlier with Dan. It’s Primal Wound Friday here. He rolled his eyes and said, “Hell…I could teach this class…anyone who loves an adoptee could teach this class.” I corrected him and said, “Anyone with a brain who loves an adoptee.” The whole thing took my breath away. Anytime I hear someone describe that part of my life in such an honest fashion, it takes my breath away, and then I say, “Ummm, duh.”

We cannot imagine a pre-trauma life, because it started on day one. Doesn’t matter why we were relinquished, we were, and it sucks. Mac and others who dismiss our trauma do so because they cannot stand the fact that they played a part in someone else’s trauma- either willingly or unwillingly. Or, maybe not. Maybe they are just thundercunts.

I have read as of late that British people are trying to get Americans to stop saying “awesome” as it can be meaningless. So far my favorite responses were, “but I am from California” I am and secondly, “We will stop saying awesome when you stop saying brilliant.

Non-sequitors aside, when I watch the video that I posted on my last post, I get strangely triggered. I mean on one hand it is good, it is more evidence that what I have been saying is real, it is more evidence that the MAC and her ilk who ridicule adoptees are wrong. So mean they are, and really I don’t believe they even have the slightest inkling of how mean they are, I think they feel quite righteous in their cruelty. I think they think I am the mean one and they are quite reasonable to ridicule us. I remember when Jess posted that quite cruel piece to adoptees by Mercer that she invited me to read it, imagine my shock and horror when someone who I considered a friend was promoting a piece that ridiculed the biggest pain in my life. When I pointed that out to her she got defensive, she didn’t say, OMG so sorry, I made a mistake, she attacked me. She attacked Kara, and continues to, an experience she never had but she feels safe enough to ridicule. Must be nice to be so smug in your position, oh but your mother never gave you away now did she? That is not your cross to bear.

That is mine, that is Karas who is the subject of ridicule like Amanda for being “too intellectual” Okay, we can’t all write such genius articles that say things like, “Are your kids bored during the summer? try going to a museum or a park” no we leave that to the big brains like Jessica P3gis who knows how adoptees feel and how ridiculous our feelings are, we could never fathom taking our kids to a park or museum. /snark.

Oh like we don’t recognize her words, how she is so tired of adoptees trying to control the adoptee narrative as Kara pointed out to me yesterday, how tired she is of our trope, how lame and boring we are. It is time for us to move on. She probably got the word trope from Kippa, who I totally miss being my friend but has proved that I am not so important to her. Well why would I be? My thoughts and feelings are those of a hysteric, someone who is not worthwhile, someone who invents trauma when she is not busy in her spaceship making out with BigFoot. Seriously, I suck ass. I am a made up ass-sucker who gets her rocks off pretending that I suffered. When that is totally unreasonable, just because I was abandoned, just because I spent the first hours, days, weeks, who knows? Not me alone uncared for that has had no impact on my brain development or personality. Nope. That is just another way to pathologize me and make me what I really am, sub-human.

No wonder I liked punk rock so much and by that I do not mean Green Day fuck Green Day. Up with DRI. and Dead Kennedys and yes the Sub-Humans. That is what I am, sub-human, not real, not important. Is there any message that makes it stronger than the fact that I am not allowed to access my own birth-certificate? Is there? There are all these adoption bloggers, oh so enlightened who blog about open adoption, how many of them are blogging about their efforts to open our records to make us have a level playing field, who care about our well-being.

I have seen zero, none of them.

An adoptee friend of mine asked me tonight why I brought MAC up again, had she done something recently? No I admitted, it is just the smoldering and seething resentment I carry from the time she commented on Dawn Fr3idman’s blog, Dawn took away my comment but left MACS that said I “hated all birthmothers” because Dawn is a relinquishing mother groupie and super-hearts all mothers that give away their babies. You should totally make her aware of yourself if you gave your baby away, she already loves you, it doesn’t matter the reason. If you are an adoptee, not so much, not so interesting, sorry, but half-humans are so not sexy. Oh and MAC did some kind of lame-ass half-apology when chided by an adopter, adoptees expressing their outrage so did not matter, but why would we being walking abortions and all?

But back to why the video hurt so much, because it felt like a non-adoptee articulating why being given away and adopted hurts so much. I know some people like to say it is just the being given away part that hurts, no I disagree. it is being adopted as well, given the job description that you can’t fill. At least for me, praying every night as a child that I could go back to the orphanage because at least there I wouldn’t have the burden of being such a disappointment. I know all the things that the speaker speaks of so well, I talk to adoptees all the time and for all I know the speaker is an adoptee.

I am viewing it though as if he is not, as if he is a real person and that hurts in its own way, to be acknowledged hurts in its own way, yes, I am fucked beyond belief, there is no pre-trauma me. I hope that I can somehow climb back to a pre–trauma me but I was left, I was abandoned over and over again.

That is the reason for the long-suffering resentment against MAC and Jess and my former friend who turned on me so cruelly, yes, I have to deal with all of this, and that is not enough I have to deal with this along with the ridicule of the the people who were meant to care for me the most, adopters as a class, natural parents as a class. Even dysfunctional adoptees like Marley Greiner and adoptee rights activists as a class. I am supposed to be shamed and humiliated because yes, my mom giving me away hurts like hell, trying to be a person that I gave my whole heart to trying to be and FAILED, that hurts like hell too.

Despite the fact that I am old, despite the fact that I have tried every goddamned way I can imagine, that I know of to heal myself, I am still so unbelievably fucked-up and that is heaped upon me over and over by people like MAC and people like Mercer and Jess, that is so inexcusable, and they have never offered me a real apology. Which again with the righteousness, again with the half-human thing.

I started this blog because an adoptee friend of mine blew his brains out, I am alive because I love Tomtom and very much wanted to kill myself at one point. I have had to live with rejection that non-adoptees cannot even imagine. Thanks MAC and thanks Jess for your continued support in harming all adoptees.

Its a Mary’s Danish Binge Weekend <3 90s

I wonder how Maryanne Cohen and her gang are working to discredit this person, does Mercer still have a blog where she ridicules adoptees? I have been too busy making out with BigFoot to notice.

This video really speaks to me, I am adopted, I was traumatized. This is my reality. If I do have a pre-trauma self, what is she like, can I have know her, be her? How lovely would that be? I cannot even imagine. Gotta dash, my space ship is here. La la la, good-bye to the fair ladies who get their rocks off ridiculing people who were abandoned as children, you know what is also fun ladies? kicking canes away from the elderly, off with you now.

xoxoxoxxoxop

(the French kiss is from Big Foot, he so sends his love to you lovelies)

Joy

I have often said on this blog that I prefer to be adopted rather than being raised in foster care, rather than being with a family that had no personal investment in me. For sure, I still feel that way. While some people love to paint me as anti-adoption, which I am not, and they say that because they are cruel beings from the Planet Bad-Hair.

You really have no idea the damage you have created

Being adopted benefited me personally in a way I believe. I mean if my option was to be raised in indifference vs. being raised in a family that cared about me personally and expected a return on investment and therefore was invested in me being a healthy whole human, yes adoption benefited me. My personal reality was that my natural family was perfectly capable of raising me, had they not bought into the myths of adoption and I would have had a trust fund, which I did not have being adopted out, in a reality where I am still paying off student loans. That had the myth of adoption not been trotted out as a given to my natural fam-fam, I would not have to deal with any of this because they did have the means and the ways.

If they were the type of folk that just didn’t care and sent me to suffer in care despite that, I would have suffered. In regard of my own personal difficulty, I was adopted, so for me to say I wish I wasn’t is so unpalatable, yes I wish my identity wasn’t destroyed, yes I wish I could be one person instead of split into a geode of selves but I don’t know that life and I love the people I do know. All of them.

No, at the same time I cling to my love of all the people in my life, I don’t wish this division on anyone. Not even MAC. Well maybe MAC and Jessica, no kidding, not even on them and all their smuggy-smugness, well maybe just a little so they would stop being so smuggy. So they would stop having all the answers that they cannot even begin to fathom for adoptees. It is complicated to say the least.

So I was making out with my boyfriend BigFoot, oh kidding, see how bitter I am about being ridiculed for the most painful experience of my life? If I was a beer I would be called ESB which stands for Extra-Special-Bitter, okay not losing sight of what this post is about.

Adoption may be better for one particular child but is it better for children? Okay for someone like me, as painful as this is to say, and unless you are an adoptee with a good relationship with your adoptive parents you have no fucking idea how painful this is to say, without the bullshit of adoption I would never have been adopted. My adoption was unnecessary, and no if you are not in my position you cannot even fathom how painful that knowledge is, I mean there is no happy resolution. I don’t have the luxury of villains in my life. That sucks ass.

The devil is not in the details the devil is in the ambiguity.

Don’t ever underestimate how necessary villains are.

I do not mean to discount those that had real villains in their lives, my afather did not molest me, I am really not trying to say my difficulty is greater, but my difficulty is more ambiguous. I know lots of esp. female adoptees who were seen as fair game for sexual experimentation, is that even the right words? Up for grabs is more like, not really blood so just a fun-hole to experiment with. Yes that makes me angry. Which brings me back to my original point, is adoption good for the child or good for children?

If we take children in the aggregate, like my era, like what is called the Baby-Scoop-Era, but only really as it relates to United States domestic adoption. Because we continued to baby-scoop just when we let women in the U.S have more control we continued to baby-scoop just in foreign lands, I mean the Baby-Scoop-Era is really a misnomer we just scooped with a farther reaching spoon.

So back to taking children in the aggregate, if we failed to reach our far-reaching spoon around the world what would happen? Would children be better off? Less children would be trafficked to be sure, those that really wanted to help children like so many Paps and APs esp. of the Christian persuasion who are so called by God to eat the last piece of pizza and gain so much praise by adopting an orphan, what would happen if they couldn’t gain that praise?

If they had to gain that praise by helping a family stay together? If they had to gain that praise by providing love and support to an orphanage? If they had to gain that praise from the much needed support to the BigBrothers/BigSisters community in their own neighborhood? Oh but they may be matched with domestic black kids, how unexotic.

What if it wasn’t about gaining praise at all?

What if it was about helping children? If it was about helping children we wouldn’t hear these ridiculous comments from adoptoraptors about how they are saving these particular children; we would be hearing comments from adoptoraptors that didn’t say things like : “I saved this child from a flea-infested orphanage” We would hear comments like “I sent that orphanage money for a flea-bomb” Because with adoption there is an investment to not care about the child, to care about the parents, and de facto not care about the children.

Adoption destroys the best interest of the “children” which would include the undesirables.

So as of late I have been wearing my blond hair in a braid against my skull, a real German plait. Which is really no different than the Danish style. I mean I was destined for the drindl-type dress. Full skirt, tight bodice, of course I am not running around in them not for God’s sake. I am no longer a little girl, but the plait, well that is related to being a grown-up lady.

As fortune would have it, I am finding myself relating to quite a few German-Americans and Germans living in America, or as my afamily would phrase it, “I am surrounded by Krauts” My afamily is Danish and de facto has a resentment against Krauts, I mean who could blame them? The Danes and the Krauts have a particularly dark heritage. The Danes are SO PROUD of the the fact that they saved their Jews, which you know, they were given kinder treatment, holy shit that feels like treason to type.

I have noticed though of late, that me who has always expressed that ancestry holds no interest to me beyond a couple of generations, I am starting to feel like more and more of a fraud about things that did not bother me before. When I was in my twenties I worked on a project for the USHMM I was a sub-contractor under WGBH, the part that I worked on, I worked with a woman whose last name might as well have been, “Iamakraut” and I worked with a lot of other subs.

It was an emotional project, it had to do with the treatment and fate of Jewish children in Nazi Germany, it was tough. For a lot of people, people from South America, American Jews, Mexicans, French people who would occasionally turn to me an notice that I looked German, that I could have been a Nazi despite the fact that I wasn’t even close to being born at that time and when I bothered to be born, I was born in California. People broke down and left the room, took long breaks in the bathroom and then came back with angry eyes and told me I looked ‘Aryan’.

I was quick to deflect. “I am Danish, we saved our Jews” I explained. Then one moment as I was lifting my staple gun I thought “No, I didn’t save any Jews and I didn’t burn any of them either” I was claiming a heritage that I didn’t have and as a Nazi I didn’t have either. The next time a Chilean worker looked at me, who left Chile because he felt persecuted told me I looked like a Nazi, I smiled at him and said, “Yes, you are right, and I will shoot you in the back of the head after lunch, depending on what you have for lunch” I winked at him “I might eat your lunch first” Because I am not a Nazi, who killed innocent people any more than I am a Dane who saved anyone.

That was my first step to being able to accept that I was of the unholy German ilk.

When I turned 34 my natural mother came to visit me and we walked down the street and I expressed to her that I might be able to pass as German. Her mouth dropped. I am of English and German ancestry, but despite being in reunion for about 16 years at that point had not been able to accept who I was.

That didn’t bother me so much. These last few weeks after giving real Germans, real Danish Christmas treats and explaining what they were, bothered me just a bit. I started to feel like a fraud. I am English and German, the parts of me that seem so German ironically come from my English side, my German side is dark, there are dark Germans.

So many parts, and they start out so small, how difficult is it to be raised by Danes who are so proud of their resistance, their culture to accept that your own ancestry is a part of the big ugly?

Oh how I love being Danish, so much with their pretty red flag and their buttery baked-goods, their hearts and little orange horses that peppered my childhood, their cleanliness, their organization, their love of beauty and pleasure. How many times have I quoted or read e.e cummings?

i sing of Olaf glad and big
by E. E. Cummings

XXX

i sing of Olaf glad and big
whose warmest heart recoiled at war:
a conscientious object-or

his wellbelovéd colonel(trig
westpointer most succinctly bred)
took erring Olaf soon in hand;
but–though an host of overjoyed
noncoms(first knocking on the head
him)do through icy waters roll
that helplessness which others stroke
with brushes recently employed
anent this muddy toiletbowl,
while kindred intellects evoke
allegiance per blunt instruments–
Olaf(being to all intents
a corpse and wanting any rag
upon what God unto him gave)
responds,without getting annoyed
“I will not kiss your fucking flag”

straightway the silver bird looked grave
(departing hurriedly to shave)

but–though all kinds of officers
(a yearning nation’s blueeyed pride)
their passive prey did kick and curse
until for wear their clarion
voices and boots were much the worse,
and egged the firstclassprivates on
his rectum wickedly to tease
by means of skilfully applied
bayonets roasted hot with heat–
Olaf(upon what were once knees)
does almost ceaselessly repeat
“there is some shit I will not eat”

our president,being of which
assertions duly notified
threw the yellowsonofabitch
into a dungeon,where he died

Christ(of His mercy infinite)
i pray to see;and Olaf,too

preponderatingly because
unless statistics lie he was
more brave than me:more blond than you.

How many times did I take comfort in this poem, so many.

But it is not my poem, it is not my people’s poem, it belongs to my aparents, the people that taught me their customs, not the krauts, not the villains.

I am left with shame and jealousy, except go Winston! except the Irish.

Lorraine decided to take some comments down because they were speculative about her granddaughters motivations, they were mostly well-meaning comments, and some very insightful ones that were offered generously from adoptees about how their own experiences might provide understanding into Lorraine’s granddaughter’s feelings. My own comment wasn’t particularly insightful but rather snarky, not directed to Lorraine, but another comment. True confession: I *personally* have never been offended when Lorraine has taken one of my comments down because well, the world can live without some of my comments well enough and sometimes they definitely exemplify my most impulsive and bolshie self instead of my contemplative and kind self.

Surprisingly, at least to me, I got v. triggered by Suz’s post. That hit home a lot more because I saw it more as particular point of view, and am quite unproud of my comment, not v. articulate, but Suz was gracious enough to answer me and it got me to thinking as things that make one uncomfortable often do. I don’t see discomfort as necessarily a bad thing, I see it as what has often been a catalyst to deeper understanding in my own life. It is a challenge, but when met often comes with clear and tangible rewards. Of course I don’t like it, but it has its purpose.

Thinking on that and the fact that I am one of a handful of people who have blogged with her mother aware that she was blogging and my mother blogging about her own experience as well, I thought that puts me in a rarefied position to weigh in on privacy issues and adoption blogging. Both my mother and I share a desire to see adoption reformed, both my mother and I agree on the fact that my adoption was totally unnecessary. My mother was not unfit, not unloving, not uninterested but rather unsupported, railroaded, and was suffering the slings and arrows of a culture that was influx, it was in California in the 1970s, but my mother was a child of the 50s, she was raised by v. religious and determined people who believed that they had found a more civilized way to live post WWII.

She certainly had a foot in the new ideas and expectations of that era but also was coming from a community so conventional that she told me all the girls in her senior class wore gold-crosses in their yearbook photos to show what good Christians they were. Even though she was but a teenager a world and culture away from how I grew-up, where even for girls virginity was seen as a kind of shameful thing. When I was a teenager that only meant no boy wanted you. I think I actually cut my mother more slack about the times and her obstacles than she does. I remember distinctly one time asking her if she couldn’t forgive herself more do to her lack of choices and her voice got real low and said, “No, no reason is good enough” which is challenging for me because her guilt leads to shame and her shame leads to me being treated as less than, not on purpose just because she does feel so bad about it. Which sucks because if my grandparents had been a bit more free-spirited none of this would have happened. I have to p.s. that with and I will not believe that had none of this ever happened that my sibs would not be born, from the beginning of time their have been step-parents and I do think her husband could have gotten over it. I have to say that for a reason that will become clear as I lay-out so arrogantly my rules for adoption blogging and privacy.

In part I am arrogant because despite some difficulties I think ultimately our experience was successful. If not always pleasant, if at times difficult, because every relationship that is intimate is at times difficult. I think it can be done with reform in mind without violating privacy of others.

So, the Joy of Adoption Blogging’s Rules:

1. No Pictures

No pictures without explicit permission. If the pictures are of your child and your child is not 21 they are not old enough to give permission. Being adopted carries a significant social stigma. Just today I flipped on the t.v. and it was Law and Order the plot: Adopted grandchild kills adoptive grandfather (Is there really such a thing as an adoptive grandfather, I mean the adoptive parents adopt, not the grandparents) his motivation: Not ever feeling like one of the family. Adoptees are suspect just because they are adoptees. As the only person I know who has for decades been aware of her adoption issues and kept quiet enough about them to not tell people who tell me “You are my best friend” I know what people who think they are “safe” say about adoptees. It is not pretty. You should never out an adoptee without their adult consent. I would imagine the same thing for natural parents. I may not say anything in real life, but I do listen hard, it does seem that adoptees bear the brunt of the stigma of being unwanted even more than the natural parents. If adoptee does not want to out themselves, respect that, they have to earn a living and I have never seen the stigma played out so hard as in the workplace, maybe datability, but mostly I have been attuned to the workplace. I am lucky, being female, men tend to have a thing for crazy-bitches.

DO NOT post recognizable face showing pictures of your adopted brat, just don’t. They can if they want to when they are old enough. Blurred out, back of the head, not googleable by employers, co-workers, mean girls, fine. Adoptees are going to have a hard enough time without their private details made as hit-getting blog fodder. And YES, I love pictures of cute kids as much as anyone. But restrain yourselves and think twice if you have a striking resemblance to your kid. Even a kid with the best of circumstances does not deserve to have the real meat of family life posted. If you just have a cutsey look at my kid in the pumpkin patch type blog, then okay, but no realness there, no intimate details, I can’t stress that enough.

2. No real names of others

This isn’t just your life, whoever you are you are part of a complex web of people, the adoptive parents, the other natural relatives and the siblings of the adoptee. The people they interact with. It is not cool for you to make their lives an open book. Avoid their names, I have never used Tomtom’s real name or real school or real town’s name. I have no right to invade his privacy that way. Nor do I have a right to invade my siblings privacy or their father’s or their mother’s or my own parents. I have struggled mightily with my step-father and his position on my place in my own family, at the same time I have never named him or where he worked or anything that anyone could identify him as. As much as I have been hurt by his behavior that doesn’t give me an excuse or a right to impact his personal life in that manner.

3. Remember It Is Your Perspective Do NOT speak for others

Our stories, and this blog is mostly focused on natural mothers and adoptees, those without cultural capital, not the adopters. Of course I realize from my adoptee perspective I am heavily centered on the adoptee experience. If you can find examples of me speaking for natural parents please email me the links or post in the comments. I try very hard to remember that I am speaking from my point of view about my own experience. Which is not my mothers, or my adoptive mothers, or my adoptive brothers or my sons. It is mine. I have been most offended and unwilling to forgive those in the blogosphere who speak for adoptees who are not adoptees. Especially those adopters and natural parents who tell me my pain is unreal, hysterical, akin to people who think they have been abducted by aliens or who are having affairs with Bigfoot. I didn’t have your experience and you do not have mine. Even if you are adopted yourself, I used to say that too! That it had no impact on me, well it did, and if I am the only one who was caused anguish that is interesting enough. I know that isn’t true because I do know others, but that is so disrespectful and so beyond the pale. I am adopted, therefore I am part of the adoptee experience, just as every adoptee and every adoptee story is. Adoptees are a primary source for the adoption experience and the fact that our biggest source of ridicule is both natural parents and adoptive parents and not outsiders is just shameful. I am disgusted that I have to fight so hard to just have the decent respect that any non-adopted person has as a birth-right, as they said in the Law and Order episode I referenced earlier to the murderous adoptee: Because for you there was no birth-right.

4. Even If You Are Given Explicit Permission

Check yourself. There was a blogger that got “eviscerated” to use Suz’s words for having pictures of her son on her blog. At the same time, every post she made about her son was about how contemptible he was, what a bad person he was and even calling her young grandchild an unpleasant brat. His profession was not even good enough for her. He was described as having a personality disorder, hello? That would be bad for employment, I cannot remember one kind thing being written about this poor man by his mother. This was a young man who was abandoned twice, his adoptive parents rejected him when he was twelve. I asked her once in the comments section what her expectation was, she answered me, I feel honestly, that he would say “I am fine, Mom, don’t worry” I mean of course that is paraphrased from my own memory, but really? That is not the way the world works, that is not why there is a whole field devoted to child development.

Babies need their mommies, that isn’t advanced math and children don’t cotton to abandonment and as far as evisceration goes, an abandoned twice child more than likely is going to have some serious problems, not because he is willful or a loser but because that is a traumatic experience that reoccurred. That is awfulness. But the mother considers herself the victim? When I read her blog she did not display any kind of nurturing or maternal feeling, which she may have and I may have missed. I saw self-centeredness, I saw self-concern and lack of empathy.

If I remember correctly, which I may not, she cut off contact because her son accused her of failing him. Um, didn’t she? As a mother of a child I did raise did I fail him? Yes, at times I did. That is kind of what parents do. Perhaps she could not see it that way because she herself was so traumatized by adoption. I can’t blame her for that, she couldn’t depersonalize it because having your baby taken from you can have such a self-esteem impact. Just guessing here, again I am not a mother who gave away her baby ever. But I am a mother who terminated a pregnancy or what feels more real to me, killed her baby. As an adoptee I found that more palatable, which per se is gross.

5. Ask Permission

One of the nice things that I did with my mom is that we would, upon writing a dodgy blog send it to each other via email and say, “I wrote this, what do you think?” If we thought it was getting too personal. My mother has made certain choices that the mainstream of society would be all nutty about, but I am not mainstream and don’t care as much but still I hide for the lack of desire to rile up people against her and she in the inverse about me. Ironically, it was never one of those blogs that got us all hot and bothered. It was the ones she thought or I thought wouldn’t that got us emailing a storm.

I am tired.

I will revisit this later. I will post me and Brad-the-bad-high-school-baseball-star-boyfriend-when I was in grade-seven-song.

OMG fucking Mullets!

Oh oops, maudlin musings, I also had friends who really suffered this year which is its own weirdness because you really want to be there for them, but you can only do so on such a limited basis as we all have to lay our heads on our pillows alone every night.

2011 was also very good to me, I made wonderful new friends, it brought a lot of opportunity to my door. I got to be a part of several fantastic projects not least of which was the adoptee rights demonstration, and lobbying and seeing some progress. The others are work-related and personal.

But I am a crazy lover of New Years resolutions so out with 11 and in with 12! My favorite thing about this years resolutions is for the first time in about four or five years, getting more exercise and improving my eating habits are not on the list. Thank God, I got over that. It was always so important to me, and then it wasn’t and then Tomtom staged an intervention by v. gently pointing out, “Mom this is so not you” and well I have recovered.

Which frees up my energy for others, and I do resolve the following things:

1. To make my own corset

This one is weird because I don’t really want and have never wanted a corset. I got into a conversation though earlier this year and it involved corsets and because God invented Google the next thing I knew I had at my disposal 18th century corset patterns and I was smitten. More with the sewing challenge than the actual product. I have seriously always wanted to bone something, and I know that sounds really pervy, but I am not being a pervert, I am talking about learning about materials. HD once called me a pervert because I put chocolate shavings in a green salad. He was so wrong, chocolate shavings, sea-salt and strawberries on a green leafy bed with ho-made limey dressing is actually awesome. Like my corset will be.
Weirdly one of my dearest friends is also making a corset for a completely different reason, she said I should try a mock-up first out of muslin, which is an excellent idea, but Ima not going to do it on account of that would satisfy my desire as challenge met, I am going to do other things with related activities to prep myself. The patience is the biggie.

2.Live More Frugally
Out of a sense of ethics, I already shop mostly locally, I refuse Costco they are the destroyer of communities, but to do more myself. To have a victory garden from seed. I have had lots of victory gardens in the past before I started my business and had more time, but I generally bought starters. This year, the seeds otherwise it is more expensive than groceries. To reuse and re-purpose more. Also to volunteer at the local urban farm.

3. To Get More Active in Local Politics
I know lots of ways to do this, have connections in that way but have just been lazy and involved in strictly adoption politics

4. To Follow up with leads in Adoption Politics
Some things are available to me now that weren’t before, in large part due to the Adoptee Rights Coalitions efforts, but there are still more ways to work this. To get more support from locals about this

5. Not Buy Coffee Anymore
Which so far has been the hardest. I am drinking tea which is okay but is not coffee. I miss the coffee.

6. To Sleep More
I have always had a hard time sleeping, I am afraid to go to sleep. And then the Devil invented the internet which as the compulsive reader I am makes reading everything imminently more possible. I do not get enough sleep, I need sleep but there are so many project possibilities, so much history and science to read about, so much music to listen to and then I have to work on top of that? Crazy!

7. To Be More Aggressive Professionally
I always have this one, while I am pretty aggressive professionally, I could do a lot more

8. To have a new business
I think I always say this one too, but this year dammit, I will do it.

9. To have more faith and less anxiety
Again, with the perpetual resolution. I have been making inches of progress with this but not enough. It still plagues me, see sleep, see number 6.

10. I don’t have a ten, which in itself is a good thing, I feel fit, I feel organized, I feel like my life despite some major reasons to believe as I said as I kissed SH under the fireworks of the New Year, “We have no reason to believe this will be a good year for us but I love you so much, I am still happy” We don’t. Despite all the goodness we have a specter lying over our heads that is mighty unpleasant and frightening.

Not so frightening that it isn’t average or normal or to be expected, it is just as so many people are wont to inform me as though I am not living on earth, that there are problems outside of adoption, yes indeedy there are. I have no memory of not knowing that, but thanks for the lesson Gidget.

I think that is why I like that song so much that I tie to Gina, about “I Don’t Feel Like Dancing” that song is so bubbly and disco, that you can’t help but dance to it when you hear it, despite whatever else is going on. That is what we do on earth right? We suffer, we cry,we laugh and we dance anyway. We fuck up and we get up and try again every day. It is kind of beautiful. It reminds me of Gina, it makes me ache and feel guilty esp. since she so overtly expressed her jealousy of me and Cara and pretty much anyone else that she thought was having an easier ride. I think Cara and I did, and while I feel guilty, I feel grateful to be here, to have another chance, to be able to try again. A new year.

A New Year to walk around with this particular flesh clinging to these particular bones, trying to figure out why my impulses lead me where they lead me, why my mouth spouts off like it does, a new year to be beautiful and gruesome, wise and idiotic, kind and cruel, creative and destructive. You know all the coins and all their sides, while the warm bodies around me do the same. Another year to step into the gap, to change, to look forward and sigh with sentiment.

Because we keep on getting up and trying again and dancing through our lives, which makes me want to leave you with this look back, one of my fav. songs from high school, from my mother’s era, although I introduced her to him, it reminds me of H. and dancing in my first apartment and being free and silly and girly, the things I most love to be, while still recognizing the realness of the melancholy.

“Why do I need t.v. when I have T.Rex?” David Bowie, only parallels to V.U. in influence

“To the sound of old T.Rex…” The Who.