Tag: birth relatives
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What Adopted, Foster Kids Must Know About Emotional Abuse
Many times we enter into relationships with unhealed moms and dads with unhealed pasts and chronic issues. We all can recognize physical abuse but emotional abuse is incredibly subtle. And, our propensity for connection blinds us to the hurtful elements of the relationship.
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What Adoptive and Foster Parents Can Do When Words Fail
What is a parent to do when his loving words hit the brick wall of their child’s wounded heart? This post provides information about connecting with one’s higher power.
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How Adoptees and Foster Kids Can Prepare for Birth Parent Reunions
An adoptee’s or foster kids’ reunion with birth family members can seem like a milion emotions all at once. It is easy for the reunited adoptee or foster child to feel overwhelmed, like a loser and a victim. Some say you can’t prepare for an adoption reunion, but adoptee veteran Sherrie Eldridge begs to differ.…
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One Thing Birth Parents Must Never Say
Often times birthparents want to show love to their relinquish children so much, but they don’t know how their statements will translate to an adoptee or foster child’s heart. Birthparents, learn hear what will edify us.
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This Savvy Adoptive Mama Isn’t Shakin’ In Her Boots!
See this little chickie? Isn’t she the cutest thing ever? She’s happy as can be because her mama knows what kinds of feelings and thoughts are floating around in that precious little mind. Her mama is savvy because she’s read every adoption book she can get her hands on. She knows the right time and…
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Adoptees Explain Boo-Hoo Birthdays
Let’s think about the concept of birthdays for adoptees. First, what does a birthday represent for the non-adopted person? For most, it’s a happy time, built on the foundation of being welcomed into the world. A time for birthday cakes, parties, and balloons. Now consider an adoptee’s birthday. What does a birthday represent for him?…
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Amazing Research News For Birth Mothers and Adoptees
Thanks to science, we now have a deeper glimpse into our Creator’s heart that cherish’s birth mothers and their sacrificial gift in adoption….and for the child that is adopted. We all know from Dr. Thomas Verny in The Secret Life of the Unborn Child that: ~the birth mother’s heartbeat and warmth of her body makes…
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Reflect Often How You Became An Adoptive or Foster Family
Without a doubt, you know that an absolute miracle transpired in your heart when you adopted your child. Trying to describe it would be impossible, for it was like a million emotions exploding simultaneously—like fireworks! If I had to pick just one moment of absolute, unadulterated joy it would be the moment I saw her…
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The Forgotten Father
Adoptees Are Silently Searching for Missing Birth Fathers In the majority of adoption literature, birth mothers are mentioned as the predominant loss for the adoptee. While interviewing more than 70 adoptees for a book, I learned that they think about their birth fathers as much as birth mothers. So why aren’t birth fathers honored? Why…
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Can Adoptees Remember Early-Life Loss?
Moses’ life normalizes the adopted life. He blew it like many of us, yet went on to be one of the greatest leaders of all times. Also, God called him “friend.” Moses’ First Mom, Jochebed Jochebed felt her first labor pain late in the afternoon and by nightfall she had given birth to a beautiful…
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One Adoptee’s Thoughts About Her Birth Mother on Mother’s Day
Even though my birth mother was unable to receive the love I longed to give her, and even though she has passed away, I still have a deep love for her. I wish I could tell her: • I am bone of your bone and flesh of your flesh. • You were a voice for…
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Yikes…Tell the WHOLE Truth?
Many parents who adopt are terrified that their children will someday learn about the negative aspects of their child’s birth family history. “What if my son finds out that his birth father is in prison? What if he discovers that his birth mother is a prostitute, or drug addict? What if my daughter learns that…
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Maximizing Pressure-Packed Days
As children of God, we are all in the wonderful process of being healed by our Great Physician, Jesus. His healing can be evidenced in a new-found appreciation for life, as we learn to enjoy Him. Webster’s defines appreciation like this: “To be grateful for; to value highly; to place a high estimate on; to…
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A Practical Tool for Helping Adopted and Foster Kids Grieve
Friends, I have always loved this poem because I think it shows the reality and redemption involved in adoption. It would be a neat project to do with the kids this weekend! Get a big piece of butcher paper, finger paints, and markers and let them create their vision of their tree. Then, ask them…
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A Letter to My Granddaughter, by an anonymous father
Dear Baby, Although I consider myself a literate and learned man, I confess that these are the hardest words I have ever written or read in my nearly fifty years of life. I want to tell you about the circumstances of your conception and birth. Since I won’t be able to do it in person,…
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Change An Adoptee’s Name?
Changing an adopted child’s name is of great concern to parents of internationally and domestically adopted children. One mother wrote, “When a child is adopted at age five or six, or later, do you feel it’s appropriate to change the child’s name? Should we ask our child? Doesn’t changing the name give the message that…
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How Adoptees Think About Their Birth Mothers
All children, adopted or not, have secret places within where they can fantasize about perfect parents. They travel to these places when disillusioned with their own parents. Freud called this the family romance theory. When the non-adopted child learns around age seven or eight that his parents have both negative and positive characteristics, their fantasies…
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The Granddaddy Fear of Many Adoptive Moms
The subject of birth parents is a frightening one for many moms with adopted kids. Do you mean that my child has two mothers? What if my child reunites with the birth mother and loves her more than me? Do you think I should tell him he has two mothers? If you are in an…
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Adoptee Mixed Feelings and Thanksgiving
There’s a certain, undefinable sadness that hovers over the heart of an adoptee that is aging….at least this one. Memories of loss paint a melancholy, forboding, lifeless, un-iniviting landscape. But today of all days, we should be thankful! It’s Thanksgiving, after all. Mixed feelings are running rampant inside of me! Anybody out there identify? I…
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Confessions of An Adoptee Hoarder
Our living room floor was scattered with tidbits of paper, scratched-out notes from my first conversation with birth relatives, photos of generations past, a handwritten will of my birth grandmother, the first card I received from my birth mother, the newspaper clipping with the hand carved ship my grandfather made for Henry Ford back in…
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An Adoptee’s Wish List
If only this could happen, the gaping wound in my adoptee soul would heal. If only… • I knew the names of my birth parents • I could access my original birth certificate • I could see my birth mother’s face • I could know medical history • I could find my missing birth father…
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Sherrie’s “Take” on Her Missing History
Oh, how I hate missing history! I know all about my birth mother’s genealogical family, but nothing about my birth father’s. He is still shrouded in mystery. I remember giving the intermediary-lady who found her these questions: What is the family health history? What nationality am I? Who is my birth father? The third question…
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The Answer When Adoptees Don’t Know Their History
There certainly is a lot of adoptee anger and sadness regarding missing birth family history. Whether its the opening of our original birth certificates, owning only a certificate of abandonment from a foreign country, or finding negative and painful history, and even a tombstone…its all hard to process. In the midst of our finding identity…
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What Adoptees Deserve from Their Birth Mothers
Dear friends through adoption, Remember the metaphor of the Great Eagle and the eaglet? I’ll be the eaglet today and tell you how it felt when I stepped on to the wing of the Great Eagle. Remember…the pain of the nest was too much for me…I couldn’t stand it….I cried to get out of the…
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Adoptee Fantasies Must Wash Away
Dear friends through adoption, Oftentimes, we grow up believing fantasies about our birth family. Some imagine birth parents as a king and queen who live in a castle, concluding that life would indeed be wonderful when reunion occurs. I remember when I met with the intermediary that eventually found Elizabeth, my birth mother. We met…
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What Adoptees Wish Others Would Say About Searching
Dear friends, The reactions of my family members hurt and I didn’t understand why they wouldn’t back me searching for my birth mother. My husband said, “Sherrie, she shut the door 47 years ago and if you try to open it, you may get hurt.” Translating what my Dad might have been thinking…well, I don’t…
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An Adoptee’s Heart-Wrenching Decision to Search
Dear friends through adoption, After hearing my family’s silences, judgments, and sarcasm about possibly searching for my birth mother, I made a very difficult decision. It was a decision that was new to me, even though at the time, I was 47 years old. I was like an overgrown eaglet who had stayed in the…
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Why Would You Want to Search for Birth Relatives?
Good morning, friends! I remember when curiosity was spilling over inside me! I had my birth mother’s name….Marjorie Elizabeth Perry. A real person. My fantasy mother was coming to life. Really? She was real? How could I not find her? I wanted to find her and reassure her that she had made the right decision in placing…
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How To Find Adoption Identity Clues
How do you connect the dots(clues)? Look for mysteries, out-of-the-ordinary stuff, shocking circumstances, and repetition. What makes your mind say “really?” When I was a child, the physician who delivered me visited every week to check on me came until I was old enough to ask who he was. Hmmmm. Something strange there. Anything come…
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Is Searching for Lost Birth Relatives Worth the Risk?
Dear friends, Before deciding to go full blast on our adventure, we must count the cost, don’t you think? See this precious little girl, dressed up as a detective? If we could see her heart, this is what she would look like. Most adoptees in the All-Adoptee Growth Group (all-adoptees@yahoogroups.com) say that they think about…
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You Are Invited to an Adoption Identity Search!
You are invited to join me in what I’m calling an “Identity Search!” It doesn’t matter who you are or what you do or how and if your life has been touched by adoption. We will be searching for clues, confirmations, circumstances, and confidence. Up for the journey with me? I’ll give you an adoption…
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Have You Been Carrying Around Old Things, Like Me?
Dear friends, There’s a photo that I’ve been hauling around in a folder for years (at least 30). Of course, I can’t put my hands on it right now, but let me describe it to you. It features a Jewish man who is weeping profusely, his face mostly buried in a damp handkerchief. If you…
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I’m Blogging at WordPress! Wanna Join Me?
Hey friends, After technical difficulties to numerous to mention, I’ve opened up my blog here on Word Press. How are you? If you haven’t heard, I’ve got a new knee (right). Complete knee replacement in May and doing great now. Ready to get back into the blogging saddle! Want to dive into some meaty adoption…