I am an adoptee and I have been denied my identity. The entire world seems to have agreed on a narrative where they see my experience as a rescue I should be grateful for.

I’m told how to feel and my feelings and traumatic experiences are framed as a blessing.

Why is this????

Why do people who have no investment in adoption also participate in the silencing? Here is a link of 100 adoptees stating what makes them angry about adoption and their experience. I felt so validated reading it.

https://adopteeinrecovery.com/2015/01/07/adoptees-why-are-you-so-angry/


Anyone/everyone please give an opinion or answer as to why?

It was a subterfuge inflicted upon you with no regard for what is your inalienable right. To know where and whom you came from.

LDS adoptions excel at the "art of the con." They erase any vestiges of the adoptees birth families, and deny their right to connect with their birth parents/siblings, other biological relatives, etc.

It's a pretend world where you don't exist. Or your "other" family.

Until/unless you can regain some self-autonomy and find your actual roots, you'll be none the wiser. It's a cruel manifesto and burden placed on you, the adoptee.

Open adoptions are much more humane than this is.

From my own experience with LDSS adoptions, I know this to be true. I'm a birth mother. My son was not given his ethnic background, but was lied to instead. He had virtually no medical history or family history of his other family when I found him at his age 30. His adoptive mom flipped out and adamantly opposed our meeting. In order to oblige her, he cut me out and we have yet to meet. Either that or she would cut him off completely. And she is the one who raised him.

So he went on a mission. Then went A-wall afterwards. Became agnostic. Turned to drugs and alcohol. It would have been doing him a great kindness for her to allow him to meet his birth family, something he wanted badly as well. But to her we never existed at all. My finding him was something that was never supposed to happen. And yet I was blessed to be able to. And blessed him in turn because at least I was able to answer his questions about me and his birth father, and our respective families.

He's met his half-brother. He always wanted a brother of his own. He cannot meet me. His half-sister is disabled now and living overseas. So I don't even know if they'll ever get to meet. It was a keen disappointment for her not getting to know him. Like it was for the rest of my family.

My mother? Counted him as one of her grandchildren until the day she died. He was her first. That's because I was sixteen when he was born. And silenced and shamed by the cult I was born into.

Never again. Never again. He's Jewish, like I am. We say "never again," for the Holocaust. It's as life and mind altering losing your family because of a cult that pries babies away from their mothers, to be raised by strangers who do not have those children's best interests at heart.

I'll pray for you that you find your birth family. DNA online is one way to help locate relatives, that in turn may direct you to where you came from. Just knowing is half the battle. You deserve as much.

Anonanon Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I am an adoptee and I have been denied my
> identity. The entire world seems to have agreed
> on a narrative where they see my experience as a
> rescue I should be grateful for.

I agree that this is true in American society (and possibly, North American or "Western" society...MAYBE, because I don't know), and in an American historical context this makes sense. In times past, most adoptions occurred in situations where American society as a whole accepted that the mother had "sinned," and that the offspring of that "sinning" was fortunate in that they were given a replacement family which allowed that "sinning" to be obscured from more public knowledge. This was genuinely seen, by most people, as the most compassionate thing to do for both the mother and the child (and for the mother's family as well, whose social standing was also at risk).


> I’m told how to feel and my feelings and
> traumatic experiences are framed as a blessing.
>
> Why is this????

Because, in times past, it WAS (or, at least, it often was) a blessing. It allowed a child to grow up to be a fully-accepted adult, who was able to marry the person of their choice, without bringing the knowledge of their mother's assumed "sin" into either their new married family, or their community. For children who were adopted into families of a higher socio-economic level, or where there was more money (remember the Great Depression, as well as similar difficult American historical eras), it enabled children to have what was presumed to be a better life, with better educational prospects, better marriage prospects, and a better (more economically substantial) level of life. For children who had been the product of already-affluent and socially-established families, it allowed the child to be "equal" (in the sense that the child would not be disinherited or socially shunned because of their presumed "sinful" heritage).



> Why do people who have no investment in adoption
> also participate in the silencing? Here is a link
> of 100 adoptees stating what makes them angry
> about adoption and their experience. I felt so
> validated reading it.

These adoptees are perfectly correct...but it has taken until into the twenty-first century before this could be fully acknowledged, because we (the American people) are still "growing up"--just as we have been for the past going-on-three-hundred years.

Within American society, adoptees today are in a very similar position to GLBT Americans, or biracial offspring, or people of color or previously-avoided ethnicities...all of which are now--at last, finally!!!--able to accept and identify with their biological family origins, and "reinvent" their default social acceptance.


This is a good time for adoptees, and the fact that you are able to post this is evidence that the things you care about are rapidly improving.


[I have not written this theoretically. I am the biological daughter of the "wrong" brother (the one who was NOT married to my mother), and my birth permanently destroyed a number of lives, some of whom I care[d] for and love[d] extremely much, for all the rest of their lives. Growing up, and through much of my adulthood, I had my own problems with these issues...except I was not told what the truth actually was until a very long time after I became an adult. I knew, of course, that there had been a horrendous, and literally unspeakable, family break-up (which was NEVER healed or addressed, by anyone)...but I had no idea that MY existence was the cause of it. I understand your feelings, and I also think that you need to realize that, on this issue, America is still very much in the process of evolving in a better direction. The efforts to help this along are good, and at some point down the line, things ARE going to be better for everyone concerned. Right now, "we" (American society as a whole) are working on it...as evidenced by your post here, and by the unofficially organized efforts of others in your position.]

Coming from where I have been my entire life, I do empathize with you, and I feel for what you are feeling now.

The very Catholic social worker who helped me locate my birth son in Idaho told me 99.999% of her referrals were all LDS. Either the adoptees themselves, or their birth families.

Why, I asked her? Because she told me it is the ONLY religion that goes to such great lengths to erase the birth families.

I was not told this when I was younger and he was a newborn. I was lied to, like he was lied to as he grew up.

The LDS adoptions are the worst, and that was from someone in the profession who helped reunite families - because they could get ZERO assistance from TSCC to do that for them. In fact they are up against a brick wall.

The social worker who made our reunion possible was shut down by my birth son's adoptive mother, when she found out. That's how angry she became knowing that I'd found my birth son. This "earth angel" had reunited hundreds of LDS families until my own became possible.

That takes a really evil person to do something so horrid.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/17/2018 02:34PM by Amyjo.

Well, you asked for opinions...

If I met you, and was deciding whether or not to be friends with you, I wouldn't care if you were adopted or not. I wouldn't care who your "real" mother (or father) was or wasn't. I'd only care what kind of person you are -- what "identity" you had made for yourself, not what "identity" you did or didn't inherit genetically.

But yeah, I know, that's just me, and it's not you. You may care about your genetically-inherited "identity." I get that. It's just that I don't care -- not that I'm not empathetic, but simply that what I think of you as a person isn't affected by that one bit.

I'm not adopted, and I haven't adopted, so perhaps I'm just clueless (feel free to say so!). I simply consider who you are as an individual to be important, who you are as genetic offspring to not be important.

I grew up with a very good friend (in the mormon church) who was adopted. Mostly it didn't affect him, but he did sometimes think that his adoptive parents treated him differently than their genetic offspring -- and I sympathized with him on that. He wondered who his 'real' mother was -- both out of curiosity, and out of some vague notion that his 'real' mother would treat him more normally than his adoptive mother did. I didn't know if that was the case or not -- it could have been true, it could have been that his 'real' mother was an awful person who abandoned him and didn't care. I just know he wanted to find out, and as my friend I supported whatever he wanted.

But (as amyjo pointed out above), his situation was a product of LDS Adoptions. Which meant he was frustrated at every turn trying to get any information about his 'real' mother (interesting side note -- he never once expressed curiosity about his 'real' father. I don't know why).

He came out as gay (which I knew was the case since we were both 14) after joining the Air Force instead of doing a mission. He had a hard time with life in general after leaving the Air Force. He suffered the church-induced guilt about being gay, the church-imposed ignorance about his family, and his TBM adoptive family's rejection of him for being gay. It was really hard on him. He killed himself at age 27, unable to overcome the guilt, rejection, and lack of self-worth. My only consolation was that I told him many times that none of that mattered to me -- he was my friend, period. Adopted or not. Gay or not. ANYTHING or not. That's the best I could do, but there were so many others who didn't accept him that he couldn't take it any more.

So I get it, despite my cluelessness. And I don't get it -- because all I care about with people is what they've made themselves into, not what their genetics imposed on them, or what some church/agency did with them when they were young.

I hope you find your identity.

I suspect that an adoptee 'might/could' reach a point in his/her life where they decided that they were in a good place, and that the adoption did not detract from that achievement. In theory, an adoptee could be delighted to be such.

But, yeah, not knowing who your birth parents were, or their history, has to be a real bummer. There could be some real brutality in processing the one defining question: why didn't my mom and dad want me?

Couple this often burning issue with the LDSSS program of absolute refusal to share information between the two sides of the equation, and you can wind up with a life time of agony.

The other day I listened to two people discussing how miserable their upbringings were, because of their abusive parents, in both cases, and because of abusive older siblings, in one case.

They spent some time 'topping' each other's stories of abuse, and then finally tallied their respective blessings received as they aged and distanted themselves from their families. Just their survivals were viewed as triumphs.

The issue didn't arise, but I suspect each of them, as children, could easily have wished to have been adopted out.

The old Mexican saying comes to mind again, "Cada quien habla de la feria segun le fue en ella." (We each talk about the fair according to what happened to us there.)

But I don't begrudge any adoptees desire to get answers to the sociological and biological questions that invariable arise.

Since I am literally appliqueing a book cover based on an oil painting on a deadline, I will be brief.

So all of the birth parents thank you.. And to all of those who have posted on this topic, Thank you. And to those who talked about how mormon doctrine changes the culture of adoption thank you. And to all of those Who dressed the mormon doctrine Of temple sealing into eternal family linesAs a mormon concept with regards to adoption and its influence on the identity of the adoptee, Thank you. And to those who reflected upon the in equitable treatment with thin biological family units they had been received into upon their adoption well members of the church Thank you. This special citizenship within families appears Always a paradox sort of like being a peasant in a castle or working sharecropping somebody else's land Yet the in an adopted member of a tribe sort of.

To the degree that someone is able to love and parent without a Mini me who shares exact gestures size nose face looks etc, And to the degrees at the mormon Ward family is culturally integrated or the adopted person fits in with a genetic phenotype similar enough to Ward members in the community so they are treated as truly belonging though Ward family, 10 adoption into either a family unit or a Ward family tribe might include receiving mixed messages cultural bias and prejudice from the people around you at all times. I recall a Bishop's daughter live known all my life turning to me anxiously because my hair wasn't flat and straight like hers it was curly like my cousin born into the Italian family I was adopted into in fact that business owners daughter's curly hair was far curlier and thicker than mine however the Bishop's daughter turned to me my 1st year of girls camp and said O do you think you might be part black. And ask me to sleep outside of the tent so there wasn't room in the tent for me.

Several years into high school my dopted grandmother's genealogist called me anxiously and said Ruth Ruth it's finally happened and explain the thing about the priesthood why would she have cared O because from her genetic heritage with thin hair so thin you could see or scout through it straight hair so straight she couldn't even permit and get it to stick she expressed an ethnic bias against much an attic phenotype. It was this family when I went to someone's 2nd marriage after their temple marriage had failed sadly there I buried in the back yard and the inner juice me to their new spouse and said this is my adopted cousin, So obviously mormon doctrine about belonging in a family through temple sealing is about a Teeny mila meter thick.

Will you can choose I'm me I'm still tied to painting in the win isn't there Some old song go my own way. Trying to paint in the win . Hey! Back work!

Should read <I used tap to talk function writing post above sorry>


.... it was this family that I went to some ones second marriage after their temple marriage had failed sadly , and there I heard it in the backyard and they introduced me to their new spouse and said this is my adopted cousin Ruth. So, obviously mormon doctrine about belonging in a family through temple dealing is about a teeny milli meter thick.

Oh well I guess/ no more Christmas cards ;/

Thank you all. My two children are adopted. My son has a very close relationship with his birth mother- a friend of my sister. My daughter is an altogether different circumstance. She was born to a happily (we presume) married couple- but she had a condition that the birth parents thought would bring a level of shame in their social structure. They insisted on a closed adoption. So my daughter knows that her birth parents didn't want her to some degree.

She is of an age where she is trying to figure out who she is, and it tears her apart that she will never know her other family. She has a sister- somewhere. She is seen by non-family as of a certain ethnic identity but she will never know anything herself about that identity. And so on. It is especially hard when she compares her situation to that of her brother, who talks to his birth mother and brothers nearly every day. She is really struggling right now.

Oh, I feel for your daughter. Adopted girls long to meet their birth families even more than male adoptees do.

Maybe she can get on one of those DNA databases like Ancestry or 23 and Me. Or My Heritage. I get DNA matches all the time from the latter two. That might bring her some closure, as she may find cousins or siblings; aunts or uncles. Even if her birth mother is not willing to meet up. There may be other relatives who are. I've heard of some adoptees meeting siblings and extended family that way, even when their birth mom isn't able to for whatever reason.

Where the adoptee is coming from ... you are part of a triad, the adoptee, adoptive parents/family, and birth family. In a closed adoption you weren't able to identify with your family of origin. Who wouldn't feel shut off from an integral part of themselves?

The anger is part of the grieving of what you lost and can't reclaim - except there are some remarkable stories of reunion where siblings can meet at last. Sometimes the birth parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. And that can be very healing and therapeutic if you are able to someday.

Finding people who identify like you do. Share some of your talents, interests, looks, etc. And intelligence.

My birthson told me when we corresponded that he felt like a fish out of water in his adopted family. And probably very misunderstood. He was the only one in his family who writes poetry (he got that from me.) And the only one who can sing well (he acquired that from his mother.) He went to school to almost the exact same school my mother attended when she was 20 (he was 30, following his military service.) He works in the same industry as his half-brother did for a number of years, and in the same geographic area. Literally a drive away from each other, both as young adults. And they grew up on different sides of the continent. All this, up to our finding him and making that connection, which before he knew nothing about. His talents are from his biological family.

He had a difficult childhood. What parent would wish that on their child, when promised he'd receive all the things I wasn't able to give to him growing up? He was a farm laborer from early childhood on.

I'm glad I found him when I did. Only wish it had been a happier time for both him and our family. He's been through a lot of trauma as an adoptee. I can only try to understand the pain he must feel - because he had no say in his being given up or placed where he was. And I was misled and deceived by the cult. Adoptions were draconian during that era. Mormon adoptions by and far were (and still are) the worst, according to the social worker in Idaho who helped birth families reunite. As Tevai pointed out, things have changed enormously since then, and many adoptees are learning where they came from. Meeting their families of origin, and gaining a sense of themselves that would've been impossible 2-3 generations ago.

Don't give up hope you'll find your birth family. And make some new memories and meet relatives who will be happy you did.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/17/2018 08:52PM by Amyjo.

I could never have put a child up for adoption. I would have never gotten over it MYSELF, which is selfish, but I can't imagine being adopted either.

I've always wondered about this, though. How it must feel.

Never. It was a lifelong dream that I'd find him again. And I did. That in itself was a miracle.

Dunno about this marginalized status of adoptees. Heck, even TLC has, 'Long Lost Family' and a spin off.

Once something is TLC'd, it's hugely mainstream.

I was adopted. Have met all my birth family. Been an interesting road to go down. Part of my adopted family I will have noting to do with. Some of them i will. After meeting the birth family it put a whole new light on my adoptive family. Nature is far stronger than nuture.

"The entire world" does not agree with that narrative. I certainly don't. I never would have given a child of mine up for adoption. BUT as a sexually active single woman, I quite diligently used birth control and never once got pregnant. If I had gotten pregnant, I was prepared to get an early abortion. So there is that.

Tevai is correct that back in the old days, it was expected that unwed mothers would either marry the child's father or give up their children for adoption. It's only within my lifetime that it has become more common for single mothers to keep their babies.

There was an adoption within my mom's family during the Depression era. One of my mom's sisters had a child out of wedlock, and the father of the child was urged by his family not to marry her. The baby, my cousin, was raised by another of my mother's (married) sisters. My mom told me that this sort of arrangement was not unusual. Even then, my cousin never forgave her natural mother once she knew the truth of what happened. She has carried that bitterness with her for a lifetime.

I sometimes watch the TV show, "Long Lost Family." The agony on both sides (birth parents and adoptees) is real.

I'm adopted....and I knew from the beginning. Only some of my Mormon cousins think it's relevant to bring that fact up in conversation. Consequently they are now irrelevant to me.

We have an adopted son who just found his birth father and we are happy for him.
They interact well.

He sent his DNA to 23 and me which got him in touch with a cousin.
This cousin knew the father.

We adopted him through the county and they never would have found each other had it not been for DNA narrowing down the people who could be his father.

So glad it worked out for him.

Is he able to meet his birth mom now that he knows who his birth father is?

My son's birth father died young. So there's no chance of their meeting. He did have a very large extended family. Catholics with strong familial ties. He also had children from prior marriages, so my birth son has many half-siblings.

I was adopted from birth by Mormon parents (who were converts in there 30's). They were unable to have children, and their Mormon bishop encouraged them to go through LDS social services. My birth mother was a young legal intern, going to college, and involved w/ one of the attorneys in the firm she was working for. One of the partners was the Mormon bishop. Long story short - being an adopted individual in the church was absolutely awful. For first 20 years of my life - all I heard from ward members was, "he is the adopted son of so and so...oh so you are the one who is adopted..." I was made to feel 2nd class.

When Mormons would get up and brag about their Mormon pioneer heritage, as they routinely do, including their "blood stock" of courage and fortitude, I would hear the opposite from them. They constantly ridiculed me indirectly about my adopted status. For 22 years after the adoption, my adopted status was still be referred to in their meetings, in their hallway conversations, and in their direct interaction with me. It is just appalling how Mormons act. It's unbelievable. Mormons are sick f***'s...cruel, mean, heartless, and the epidemic of just pure ignorance. Perhaps I should say how I really feel. Sorry. He it is about recovery right...this is cathartic for me.


Mormons are f'ing cruel and heartless individuals, conditioned to feel that they are superior, have superior heritage and ancestry, and that people like me are inferior. I hate Mormons with ever "marrow of my bone."

Story ends well though. In my 20's just after my mission, I happened onto an a ancestry site. I traced my lineage back 9 generations to Ireland. I found out that my 6 great grandmother was a cousin to Abraham Lincoln. In other wards, they shared the same grandfather. This knowledge sent shock waves of pride and validation throughout my mind and soul. No longer was I made to feel embarrassed or ashamed.

Mormons adopt children for prestige. For many, it's all show. Look at me, look how wonderful we are...we have adoptees - we are obviously kind, benevolent, and merciful. Like everything else Mormons do, adopting is an ego trip.

If you are adopted...first, get out of the evil Mormon cult. Don't let them make you feel inferior. Second, find you people and take pride in their accomplishments - I guarantee you - you have people to be proud of.

Thank you for sharing that. It is salve to my aching heart to hear of your journey out from Mormonism, and on finding where you came from. The whole process of LDS adoptions are cruel. To you, me, and all the others who were ripped off and denied their history as to where they came from.

My birth son was mocked because his family thought he was part black. You know, the "mark of Cain" thing. He wasn't. His adoptive parents should have had all that information from LDSS because his birth father signed the birth certificate, and he wasn't black at all. He was Hispanic. I am Caucasian.

Son was sent on a mission to a black country where he would fit right in because of his presumed mixed parentage. So he was raised with a lie as to his true ethnicity, and made to feel inferior by his family and peers in their Mormon enclave of a country town, because he was adopted and of mixed parentage.

You have validated what is wrong with that from your first hand account. Those people are effed up. And so is their sick cult to distort the truth and deceive their adopted children into believing those lies about them.

My birth son is related to George Washington through both sides of my parents ancestry. My mom and dad are distant cousins through the same parents we're cousins of George through. That was a real find on my part when reading my family tree several years back. He would be proud to know that, if I ever get to tell him.

I sometimes hope he reads RfM. He's in recovery from Mormonism too. And so much more as an adoptee to the cult. He was able to break from the religion on his own. So he deserves kudos for that. God bless him!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/18/2018 09:51AM by Amyjo.

This post is NOT 'off Topic'. It has everything thing to do with the cult and it's secrets.