We are not what we seem….

[me b zola]

We are not what we seem…

Dr. Phil had posted this on his Facebook page about 48 hours ago:

“Working on a show: Should a birth mother retain visitation rights to a child she chose to place for adoption?”

Well, that post has garnered over 14,000 comments and nearly 550 shares….in 48 hours. I have been watching what has been said on that one post since roughly 3 hours after it was posted…. And I am absolutely blown away by what people are saying. Comments referring to relinquishing mothers as “not a mother”, “dysfunctional teen agers”, and a new one for me… “a birthing pod and not a birthing mother”. I have seen them refer to adoptees as “somethings”, “bought and paid for”, and “belonging to” their adoptive parents….their “real mom and dad”. They have called adoptees “chosen”, “lucky”, “special”, and “gifts”. It is enough to make the strongest adoptee or natural mom sick to their stomachs and the weakest end up curled into a fetal position in bed. Talk about a triggering conversation!

We want to believe we are so progressive these days….that society is filled with people who think better of each other…who want peace and love to abound…who understand we are all the same on the inside and we are all equal. Wow! We are SO WRONG! We are still in the dark ages! Like the 1980s group Tears for Fears sang (I heard that one on the radio today)… “…turn your back on mother nature…Everybody wants to rule the world.”

We all want to think that the Baby Scoop Era of the 1950s through the 1970s is so far in the past… that we will never go back there…. but I am not so sure anymore. I think we could see a return to that sentiment at any time…and it scares me. If these kinds of people “ruled the world” there would be no end to the pain and dysfunction because they cannot see the big picture… “married with a lack of vision”. I really thought sentiment had changed…that moms who relinquish were largely no longer thought of as shameful, dysfunctional, twisted, selfish women who refused to keep to societal norms and decency, and who needed to be punished for their wayward ways….AND BOY WAS I MISTAKEN. I saw enough people writing comments that basically expressed sentiment of wanting to punish them to last me a thousand lifetimes! That sentiment is absolutely shamefully alive and well and living in society at large (at least among what I must assume are watchers of the Dr. Phil show).

~more @ link~

https://orphanedheart.wordpress.com/2015/02/25/we-are-not-what-we-seem/

It is alarming the things that people say to adoptees and to and about mothers of loss. On one hand you see people begging on line for women to relinquish their children, promising that they will be exalted or something, on the other hand is the reality of how they are treated (once the adoption agencies have their hands on the infants). And be an adoptee who dares to speak about our experience and/or feelings and sweet Jesus, we go from being the "chosen" child to ingrate.

I am very proud of the younger generation coming up that speaks up and out.

[StevieM]

1. Dr. Phil is horrible on this issue.

He was an outspoken supporter of the Capobiancos in their successful effort to steal Veronica from her dad, Dusten Brown.

And here is a show he did a few years back where he tried to bully a teenager into giving up her baby.

The followup FB page the mother put up proves Dr. Phil wrong.

[bigwillq]

2. Dr. Phil is horrible. Period. (nt)

[el_bryanto]

3. I think everybody's adoption experience is different

I was adopted - and I've never really felt the urge to seek out my Birth Mother - in truth I was happy with my adopted family. But i know other people have had it much worse than I did.

Bryant

[StevieM]

4. I am glad that you had a good adoptive family.

But the feelings of birth mothers count to. Many of them were in dire situations and forced to accept a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Many others were coerced, perhaps by their parents or their church leaders. Most of them never forget the children they had to give up and continue to love them for the rest of their lives.

I am not suggesting that your bond to your a-mom and your a-dad should be diminished. I'm just saying that statistically speaking your b-mom probably thinks of you every single day and would give anything to know where you are and how you are doing. Hearing from you would probably be the happiest day of her life.

I agree that all experiences are different. But there are trends. And not too many first mothers just give up their children and happily move on with their lives.