Adopt-a-tude Says a Fond Goodbye

Well, the time has come for AAT editors and writers to admit to reality: We're busy! Raising kids, working jobs, doing other writing, moving on. After this entry, we'll no longer be posting on AAT.

When I began Adopt-a-tude a few years ago, it was an experiment in group blogging, one that did take off for awhile, possibly because of the sparks flying in the adoption community at the time. The sparks are still flying, of course, but the public discussion of adoption has shifted, too.

I wouldn't say that the cultural "moment" for adoption has passed. But it's no longer big news that many adoptees are determined to get access to their birth records—or that international adoption doesn't always have a happy ending. The increasingly nuanced depictions of adoption in movies and TV means that at least a few consciousnesses have been raised. May we all continue to raise awareness about adoption issues that matter to our families.

I'm currently Editor in Chief of Talking Writing, an online literary magazine, and I'm very open to publishing high-quality personal essays or fiction about adoption. Please check out TW's Submissions page for more information. Fran Cronin, AAT's blog manager, is also a columnist at the magazine and often touches on her experience as an adoptive mom.

So come follow us at Talking Writing, "like" us on TW's Facebook page, and sign up for a free TW subscription. And regardless, thanks for supporting Adopt-a-tude.

All our best wishes to you and your families!

Martha Nichols, founder of Adopt-a-tude

For those who missed it, here's the contents for TW's adoption spotlight last November...

---

Spotlight: Adoption and Parenting

Celebrate National Adoption Month with TW in November

Melissa Fay Greene

Author Note: Melissa Fay Greene
Two personal takes on No Biking in the House Without a Helmet, Greene's 2011 memoir about her nine children

• "Whoa! I'm a Character in a Friend's Memoir?"
  by Andrea Cornell Sarvady
• Adoption, Light and Dark
  TW Review by David Biddle

Interview: Adam Pertman
One of adoption's staunchest supporters talks about the latest challenges—and Steve Jobs

• "We Teach Our Kids by Being Open"
  TW Author Interview with Adam Pertman
  by Fran Cronin

Personal Essay
A mixed-race adoptee reflects on the need to create himself

• Always an Orphan
  by David Biddle

Mei-Ling Hopgood

Interview: Mei-Ling Hopgood
The author of the acclaimed memoir Lucky Girl has a new book on the way about cross-cultural parenting practices

• "American Parents Go a Little Nutty"
  TW Author Interview with Mei-Ling Hopgood by William Gray

---

Review: "No Biking in the House Without a Helmet"

By David Biddle

The "Do I Love Them Yet?" Syndrome

Once that last child begins to drive, most of us realize our capacity to parent is fading. We get a few years of empty-nest freedom before grandparenting kicks in. But the marathon is over. We finished!

Then there are the Melissa Fay Greenes of the world—and her attorney husband Don Samuel, a man who practices courtroom statements on his kids instead of reading them bedtime stories. Samuel and Greene, a journalist, had four children using their own DNA: Molly, Seth, Lee, and Lily. But then, in their early forties and with encouragement from their biological kids, the Greene-Samuel team adopted five more in less than a decade.

It began in 1999 with Chrissy (whom they renamed Jesse), a four-year-old boy of Romani (“gypsy”) descent from a Bulgarian orphanage. Then they adopted five-year-old Helen from AIDS-ravaged Ethiopia, where, Greene notes, 11 percent of the nation’s children were orphans in 2001. After Helen came nine-year-old Fisseha (renamed Sol), followed by brothers Yosef (8) and Daniel (11)—also all from Ethiopia.

In No Biking in the House Without a Helmet, Greene tells the story of building this mega-family—two loving parents, two quirky dogs, nine amazing children from three different birth cultures—all living under one roof in Atlanta, Georgia.

Cute, huh? Sweet?

Hardly. Greene is not a master parent by any means—in far too many scenes, she just lets chaos reign in her household—and this is not a simple, feel-good treatise on the ultimate blended family. Her memoir is powerful and alluring, almost like a reality TV show where you actually care about the characters.

Greene comments intelligently on adoption, family, intercultural experience, and—above all—real love. This last resonates with me most, because as a mixed-race adoptee, I know that love between parents and children, adoptive or biological, is one of the greatest mysteries I’ve encountered in life....

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

---

Editor's Note: The full text of this review—"Adoption, Light and Dark"—appears in the Nov/Dec 2011 issue of Talking Writing. This issue features a special "Spotlight" on adoption and parenting in honor of National Adoption Month, including a companion essay about Melissa Fay Greene called "Whoa! I'm a Character in a Friend's Memoir?"

 

We invite you to check out Talking Writing and subscribe—it's free!

---

No More Lost Souls: An Adopted Person’s Response to “Find My Family”

By David Biddle for Adopt-a-tude

This is Adopt-a-tude's concluding review in a series about the ABC reality show Find My Family, which first aired in the United States this past November. Each episode involves the reunion of an adoptee with his or her birth parents. Click here to watch recent episodes.

Find My Family pushes different buttons for adoptees, birth parents, and adoptive families. These differences emerged in the comments to adoptive parent Lisa's post this past Monday. In our second post on the topic, Claudia spoke about the show from a birth parent's perspective. Now David weighs in as an adult adoptee.

We'd like to invite the whole adoption community to keep talking and debating together about the issues raised by this show.


What I hate about reality shows is that the stories are often contrived and artificial. You name it, Survivor, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, The Longest Race, Dancing with the Stars, American Idol, reality and the human experience give way to gross-out, gamesmanship, and goofiness.

Find My Family is different. There’s real human drama on display here. There’s no question that the footage of adoptees and birth parents learning the truth about long-lost kin is one-take, real stuff.

I can only imagine what watching this show feels like for the millions of adoptees out there still searching for—or at least wondering about—their birth parents. As a successful searcher (we found my birth mother six years ago), I think watching Find My Family does a good job of getting across to viewers the deep emotional issues that adoptees confront as adults in the world.

It has a simple premise: the hosts introduce adopted adults, interview them about their need to find their birth families, and then perform a search for the long lost. Once the object of the search is located, the hosts interview that person as well. The final meeting between the two lost souls—and, believe me, you get a hefty dose of what it means to be a real-life lost soul when you watch this show—is then filmed. Let the hugs begin.

Find My Family is definitely a full box-of-tissues tear-jerker. You cry when you listen to the story of why the adoptee finally decided to begin a search; you cry when you understand how frustrating a search can be with all the dead ends; you cry when the show’s hosts, Tim Green and Lisa Joyner (adoptees themselves), deliver bad news and good news; you cry—sometimes uncontrollably—in the reunion scenes; and you cry during the final scenes as the adopted cavort with newly found siblings and parents in lush parks or quaint middle-class American kitchens.

I may be biased, but in my opinion the adoptees and their birth parents in Find My Family are capable of showing natural emotion on a level that makes even the best actors look like they’re getting paid millions of dollars to be fakes.

Without a doubt, placing the reunion search detective story—that’s exactly what it is—on prime time is an interesting move for a major network like ABC. And it comes at a perfect moment in history for those of us adoptees who believe that we should have more rights to identifying information and our original birth records.

Groups like Bastard Nation and Adoptee Rights are growing more and more militant as states continue to control access to information that might lead adoptees to their birth families. It is very likely that this issue is going to be highly charged in 2010. Adoptee Rights is organizing a national demonstration set for July in Kentucky at the Annual Summit of the National Conference of State Legislatures.

There is no question that the stars of this show are the adult adoptees. Their birth parents are also heroes. The defining moments of the hour come when the adoptees walk up a special hill towards the “Family Tree,” a real tree under which the birth parents (or a sibling) wait. Watching that lost soul climb a long hill towards the answer to life-long questions is powerful, even if the symbolism is a bit heavy.

One quibble I have is that adopting parents don’t have a very big part to play in these tales. We get to meet some of them, but they certainly don’t get center stage. It’s easy to see why, since the drama and existential struggle of adoptees and the parents who had to let them go is so profound.

But still, I’d like to hear at the end what the adopting mom or dad thinks when the child they raised and loved all those years has found a new mom, dad, brother, or sister. Adopting parents are often as emotionally invested in the reunion search as their adopted children.

Obviously there’s some contrivance built into how the hosts tell these stories. Details are sometimes dropped in for dramatic effect. The settings tend to be highly beatific; the film crew is definitely looking for a Hallmark™ feel to scenes (and, not surprisingly, Hallmark is an advertiser on the website). The show’s participants are often perfectly coiffed, wearing heavy makeup.

I only bring this up because what is so appealing about Find My Family is that the producers can’t choose actors or even attractive amateurs. There are only so many people who are adopted and willing to have their stories told to the world on TV. As such, the “stars” are completely real people—your neighbors, co-workers, or classmates.

This is important, because the identity issues adoptees go through are really not that much different than what anyone goes through: Who am I really? Where did I come from? Why do I feel all alone?

In many ways, all people are orphans in the world. We grow up. We leave home. We have to deal with life as solitary agents. Adoptees just have to face that their entire lives.

Find My Family, of course, portrays only the successful and positive stories of reunion searches. For every wonderful, loving re-connection the show depicts there are at least as many—and probably more—searches that don’t end well. I’ve heard too many tales of weird scenes with birth families, and sometimes the trail can lead to graveyards, mental institutions, and other depressing conclusions. Perhaps Fox should one-up ABC and consider offering something along those lines in 2010.

But despite the flaws, Find My Family does an excellent job of getting across to America what it’s like to be an adult adoptee. Here are some recognizable statements in the first few episodes from my own life and the lives of my adopted peers: “I’ve always had to deal with abandonment issues.” “I felt trashed.” “This is the look of Complete!” “Oh my God, he looks like me! This is so weird.”

In the end, this show is going to empower a lot of adopted folks and at least their birth moms to stand up and be counted as examples of fortitude and grace. In this age of high-profile divorces, celebrity adoptions, and philandering heroes, Find My Family is an antidote to the cynicism and edge that continue to seep into our lives.

Call me old-fashioned, but if I’m going to let TV enter my life, I’m more interested in plot and character development than I am in being entertained. I’ll take hugs, kisses, crying for joy, and everyday people pouring out their hearts on camera any day over people who make fools of themselves pretending they’re important.

TV should be an adjunct to our individual quests to figure out what life is all about, not an escape hole. Find My Family admirably provides the former, and in this way is truly life-affirming.

Introducing a Lucky One

By David Biddle for Adopt-a-tude

I'd like to introduce myself. My name is David Biddle and I will be posting occasionally to Adopt-a-tude. At one time in my life I had a different name. My original name was Anthony Tobias Black. I had that name for about two weeks. It's a great name, but I also like the name David Biddle.

My perspective on adoption will hopefully be somewhat unique here at Adopt-a-tude. I was adopted back in 1958 in Richmond, Indiana. I've got a lot of experience thinking about this adoption thing. For the first 20 years or so of my life I tried to ignore what it meant to me. But beginning in college, gradually, piece by piece, issues and questions that I'd refused to think about began to surface that I couldn't ignore.

My adoption situation was made all the more interesting and poignant because I have tan skin. When I was born, so-called white families weren't interested in me because I was too dark, and so-called black families felt I was too light. The story was that I was mixed race, but no one could tell me the mix or my heritage. Folks don't talk about this kind of thing very much even today, but there are many of us out there who grew up without a clue what our DNA is composed of. In the end I wasn't adopted by white or black people. I was adopted by nice people. I love my parents Bruce and Ellen Biddle. And they loved me.

Finally, I am one of those lucky ones you read about every so often. At the age of 45 and with the help of my wife and kids, we went looking for my birth mother. I needed to know what my heritage is. Most importantly, I needed my sons to know what their heritage is. By luck, I was born in Ohio, a state that allows adoptees to petition for their original birth certificate. Once I received that I at least had my birth mother's maiden name -- and my first name, Anthony Tobias Black.

We left our home in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in August of 2002, found our way to Richmond, Indiana where I'd been adopted, and did the classic town hall research thing looking at marriage records, birth records, divorce records.

I am one of the lucky ones because I found my birth mother. She is successful in life, happy, and above all was overjoyed to finally meet me. At the age of 18 she'd been forced to give me up for adoption. We have had a growing relationship now for more than seven years. I've visited for extended periods with my family twice now and I know my story. It's good enough to be a book, that story, which I've written and am now trying to get published. I have three half-brothers as well. The oldest of them and I get along like, well, brothers. It's very weird.

I hope, then, to bring to this web log a lifelong practitioner's perspective on what it's like to be adopted. You're adopted all your life, not just when you're living with your parents. And the idea of adoption and being adopted changes and morphs over time. I don't think I had an intellectual thought about my adoption until I had my own kids (see the photo). One has red hair and green eyes; another brown hair and brown eyes; and the youngest is blond with blue eyes. I think I felt like an orphan in the world until these three guys came along. I think a lot of adoptees feel like orphans in one way or another, but we work hard to ignore this. It's cool to be an orphan though these days. Harry Potter is an orphan. So was Batman, Superman, Cinderella, and Tom Sawyer. (If you have any other examples of orphans, let us know in the comments section).

The story of moving from being an orphan to being loved and part of a family can make every adoptee strong, well-adjusted, and a force to be reckoned with in the world. Each of us is different of course. I can only give you my experience and my perspective. Hopefully it will be useful or at least entertaining. If you're curious about anything, don't be afraid to ask. I love answering people's questions. I don't think I belong there, but I really believe there should be an Adoption Hall of Fame. I'd put my birth mother in there for sure. I'd put my mom in too. She was absolutely the greatest mom anyone could ever have. If any of you are interested in this concept, get back to me. I've got no money, but a lot of ideas.

Thanks for reading.