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10 Things Adoptees Want You to Know

Number 5

We're halfway through.

Don't tell us to be grateful to our parents.

Since when has wanting to know one's history and where one came from become a hindrance affecting gratefulness?

Are all genealogists adoptees? No. So why can they seek out their roots of past generations but when we do it, it's interpreted as being ungrateful?

We are grateful, in fact many times, very grateful but we also have and want the right to know who we really are, where we really came from. Our roots. Our heritage.

Here's something to think about - our DNA know it all - but we don't. Nice thought! So what's so harmful if we knew?

Thoughts on this please.

10 Things Adoptees Want You to Know

Number 4

Don't give false information on our medical records.

First, this can be a dangerous practice, especially in an emergency situation.

Second, it is a great effort and time demanding task to clear one's record of false information, convincing the source we're telling the truth and have it all replaced with a big I DON'T KNOW.

How was your medical records handled as you were growing up? Did your adoptive family provide info that attained to their family or did they admit not knowing? Leave a comment below.

10 Things Adoptees Want You to Know

Number 3

Not all grass is greener on the other side.

Our biological side might not have been ideal for raising a child but not all adoptive sides are ideal either. I was lucky as many others are. I had wonderful adoptive parents. My birth mother's life wasn't easy. But look at the cases reported of abuse by adoptive parents or murder by adopted children. Situations happen and it's not because we're adoptees. Genetic mental issues can lead an 'adoptee' to murder, but can anyone say that the same person with the same predisposition would not have done the same had he been raised by his biological family? I don't think so, unless you can claim to be some kind of prophet.

What are your thoughts on this? Leave a comment below.

10 Things Adoptees Want You to Know

Back with the next one in our series.

2. Since adoption is no secret and when the adopted child grows up he or she will learn about the birds and the bees anyway, don't tell us, as children, that we were brought by the stork, or found in a cabbage patch, or even that we smiled at you so you knew we were yours.

As an adoptee and as a mother of three biological children I will say this once and only once - all babies smile, and they'll smile at any face they see. Our smile did not pick you, and in most cases you either chose us before ever seeing our smile or you met us when we were given to you to raise.

Were you told you were adopted? If yes, what was the story told to you? If no, how did you feel about that when you found out? Please comment below.

New book trailer, check it out

10 Things Adoptees Want You to Know

As an adoptee myself, I read many things that other adoptees write. One of the aspects, in any pieces written by adoptees, that stands out is the cry for change in how the adopted child and/or adult adoptee is treated. 

For the next ten weeks I will post one thing a week that many adoptees want you to know. 

1. Adoption is not a secret.

Don't hold the truth about our origins from us. Tell it to us as appropriate for our age, but please don't make it a secret. If you, the adoptive parent, won't be the one to tell someone else will. We'd rather it be you.

What are your thoughts on this? Please comment below.

Family Links Matter: Wrap-up of first FREE promo for Bonded at Birth

Family Links Matter: Wrap-up of first FREE promo for Bonded at Birth: As of the end of the first free promo of my newly published adoption memoir Bonded at Birth: An Adoptee's Search for Her Roots I had 82 ...

Wrap-up of first FREE promo for Bonded at Birth

As of the end of the first free promo of my newly published adoption memoir Bonded at Birth: An Adoptee's Search for Her Roots I had 82 downloads. In addition I had 125 pages read in Kindle Unlimited downloads. Not too shabby, though I would have liked a bit more. Not complaining, though, as come Aug 23rd it will be on free promo once again and hopefully some word of mouth will have spread by then and more people will download it.

Now I'm off to start research prep for the big Virtual Book Tour launch come November which will run from November 1 through November 22, 2016. If you have a blog related to adoption (search & reunion or genealogy) and would like to host me and my book during this VBT please let me know. More info to come, stay tuned.

You will notice this blog has a new name and look. This is because the "new" one I was using at blog.com seems to have disappeared. From comments by other users the site has been down anywhere from five days to three weeks. Since I needed a blog to post on and was going to use that one, and still had this one on reserve, I had no choice but to give it a new look and change the title. The URL will be updated soon as well to reflect this change.

Till next time,
Gloria

New Web page: Bonded at Birth: An Adoptee Searches for Her Roots

Please visit my new page  Bonded at Birth. Come see what I've been busy working on. Follow this blog for more interesting posts related to adoption, genealogy and associated issues. Please leave comments on what you like about the Web page, what you don't like, and what you'd like to see. Also comment with answers to: What kinds of posts would you like to see here? Where would large groups of adoptees be found online? offline? See ya soon, Gloria Oren

Any Longley family member who happen across this page (from the Groton MA line) come visit the family group at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=34724192366

Good morning to all

Hope you all enjoyed the New Year holiday and are all getting back to routine daily life.

I look forward to a year of growth in 2008. Stay tuned for a big announcement to come Jan 16th.

Till then
Gloria

The winter holidays have come and gone and we now approach the new year. I wish all my readers a healthy, wealthy and successful one.

The official announcement everyone has been waiting for will be on the 16th, so stay tuned.

Regular postings will take effect after that date and will be on Wed. I have been trying to keep up with this and the project has proven to be a challenge.

Sorry about not posting yesterday.

I am still floating on air from yesterday, as something wonderful happened to me in my writing career that I was just not able to type straight afterwards.

Here's the scoop. Got home from work and loaded my e-mail. I get a message from Holly McAllister at AuthorBound, a new division of Content Connection LLC. Anyway she offered me to join a select panel of reviewers to provide feedback for Jack Gilbert's upcoming book. Jack Gilbert, for those who don't know is a writer, presenter and consultant who focuses on leadership and organizational /personal integrity. I did it. It was all online in a series of questions. After I finished I was asked if I wanted to join as a member of the AuthorBound Advisory panel. Did I want to? I'd be out of my mind not to, so there it is, as of now I am an official member and hope to be getting book and proposal review and future online feedback survey requests from them.

Next week I'll be back with regular adoption related posts.
Till then, Happy Holidays and a Happy, Healthy New Year

Gloria Oren

Bits and Pieces

Well, first off - the project I mentioned in my previous post is now about 60% finished. I'm not there yet but getting closer to the time of revealing it to all. Stay tune.

Just found this in our TV guide: Fri night, 12-21-07 CBS is hosting A Home for the Holidays, "the 9th annual concert raising awareness for adoption." In my part of town it will be shown at 8 pm PST. Check your TV listings for the show time in your neck of the woods.

Have you finished the holiday shopping frenzy yet? Either way you deserve some time to pick up your feet and relax. What better way that to watch a movie. Even better for last minute gifts consider a movie on adoption. Here are some suggestions"

Anne of Green Gables

Baby Business

Bachelor Mother

The Bad Seed

The Bigamist

Black Market Baby

Blossoms in the Dust (the Gladney story)

Border Line

A Child Lost Forever

Ca-bau-kan

The Divided Heart

There are lots more so check them out. For a whole list of options check out
http://www.adoptioncrossroads.org/AdoptionMovies.html.

Happy Holidays
Gloria

Happy Chanukah, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year

and all other holiday greetings for this time of year.

Sorry I missed yesterday's posting.

I am busy working at getting a big thing unveiled to the adoptee community and am hoping to have it done before the end of January. This will be a great way to make friends amongst adoptees and share what it's like to be an adoptee with others.

Stay tuned as more news is on the way.

Until next time
Gloria

Secrets - No Place in a Family and Especially in Adoption

I know what it feels like to be growing up in a place where secrets abound. I also know what it feels like when lies, even little white lies, are used as cover-ups. I grew up as an only child. My adoptive parents didn't want to tell me I was adopted, and probably wouldn't have if not for our teenage neighbor's prank. I won't tell you what the prank was, for that you'll have to read my book when it is published in the future, only that the way I found out was unusual and I was four years old at the time. That is when my adoptive mother opened up a bit and consented that I was adopted and swore me to secrecy about it.

Years later I discovered that it was mostly a secret for me, other neighbors, family members and family friends all knew the truth. I also knew that I was led to believe that their first child before me, who died from Leukemia, before I was even born was theirs and became ill with cancer due to their being first cousins. This is not so. He too was adopted and I'm pretty sure that had he not taken ill, he too would not have been told.

For years I lived in a secret world without knowing it. My medical records were based on what I knew, and what I knew was based on my adoptive family. I now know that this can lead to serious consequences. Back then, I was a child and didn't know this.

So my point with writing this post is a call to adoptive parents everywhere - there is no place for secrets. Even the youngest child has the capacity to understand if you tell him or her at his level of understanding. When children question about where they came from, tell them they were adopted. It may end there, or it may be followed with a request for clarification. Please don't tell them that they smiled at you so you chose them. Most babies smile at people, it is a natural instinct. Tell them the truth, whatever that may be.

It took me 37 years to learn where I came from and to start being able to put the pieces together. It doesn't have to be that way. I couldn't have asked for better parents either way so why cause further issues by resorting to secrets?

Have you heard? U.S. to join the Hague Adoption Convention

November is turning out to be a month of positive steps in the right direction on the Adoption arena. Breaking news this morning from the Department of State announced that it will deposit the instrument of ratification on Dec. 12th and an official announcement of the Convention going into effect in the U.S. will take place April 1st.

What this means for children awaiting adoption around the world is protection against corrupt practices such as abduction, sale of or traffic of these children. It also means that the adoption triad members will be assured of accountability and ethical practices by those involved in the adoption practice.

Adoptees Have Their Day! The Evan B Donaldson Adoption Institute release its white paper report this week.

The Evan B Donaldson Adoption Institute calls on all states to open up adoption records to adoptees.

November is National Adoption Awareness month. The non-profit research organization couldn't pick a better time to release a thirty-one page white paper based on an extensive study, calling for opening up access for all adoptees, in all states, to their records and original birth certificates.

As an adoptee who has searched and successfully reunited I know how much this would mean. Yet even if New York opened its adoption records I could only get the documents. My birth certificate was and will always remain a faked original. In the early 1950s several New York hospitals practiced what I'll call "under-the-table" adoptions. They would admit the birthmothers under the adoptive mother's name and complete the original birth certificates accordingly. One such hospital was Beth-El, then in Brooklyn, now nonexistent, where I was born.

Access to adoption records would restore the basic civil right to adoptees, that of knowing one's heritage, who we are and where we came from. It would give us back our roots. Accessing ones records doesn't necessarily mean reunion or barging in on a birthmother's current life. Besides when I searched I did a lot of reading. I knew that I might not find what I was looking for. Or that I might not find anyone alive or if alive the possibility that the other side wouldn't want to reconnect. I consider myself lucky. I was found and met my birthmother and maternal grandmother who died a few months later. My birthfather had passed away twelve years earlier, but I met a half-sister and have corresponded with three half-brothers and my birthfather's second wife.

I now know my paternal roots back eleven generations, of which eight or nine are quite filled out. Though this isn't so for many it is possible for some to follow up with some genealogical research and make interesting discoveries.

Besides, even the U.S. Surgeon's office's Family History Initiative claims knowledge of biological medical history to be especially worthy in "prevention, early diagnosis and treatment" in conditions such as heart disease, cancer, and mental health issues. I have heart disease. My paternal grandfather died from it. I'm a cancer survivor as is my birthmother. Both sides of the spectrum suffered from various kinds of cancer. My birthfather died from esophageal cancer. My adoptive parents kept my adoption so secretive that even my medical records contained misleading information based on their medical history. This is definitely unacceptable and could be very dangerous. I have since updated my records with the true facts as I now know them.

I can only see this paper's release as a great step in the right direction. I can only hope that change is coming, and coming soon. I wish all my fellow adoptees the civil right of knowing one's heritage and roots.

I'd like to hear your feedback so please leave me a comment.
Till next time,
Gloria

Maternal birth family surnames:
BERMAN (or BIERMAN), DEVENISHKIJ, DEVNOVSCH, SCHUSTER (CHILDREN CHANGED TO FRITZ), KOHN, ROSS

3rd great grandparents:
unknown DENVENISHKIJ and unknown DEVNOVSCH
Moishe UNKNOWN and Leah Golde UNKNOWN

Great great grandparents:
Zolmon SCHUSTER and Eshie UNKNOWN
unknown and unknown

Great grandparents:
Jacob (Schuster) FRITZ and Kate (KOHN)
John ROSS and Ruchel-Baile (BERMAN or BIERMAN)

Grandparents:
Joseph (Schuster) FRITZ and Aida ROSS
Wilfred Laurier LONGLEY and Dorothy Leona (LAURILLIARD)

Birth mother: Marcia Katherine FRITZ
Birth father: Malcolm Darrell LONGLEY

The next post will be my genealogical research of my husband's family

Till next time
Gloria