KAD Seeks Bone Marrow Transplant

Hi all – I received some information about a fellow KAD who is in need of a Bone Marrow Transplant.  I have the PDF flier his parents have made asking for help and support.  Please pass the word along.  GS

theo_brochure.pdf

Adoption Anniversaries

This past week I celebrated my “Adoption Anniversary.” Actually, to be quite honest, I had not remembered until my dad said “Happy Adoption Anniversary” to me on the phone the other day. It seems to carry less meaning the older I get. When I was younger, I remember counting down the days, like my birthday or Christmas.

I’ve posted about this before, so maybe it’s a bit stale, but it’s always around this time that I get to thinking about what it means to celebrate an adoption anniversary. For my parents, it carries a lot of joy. It means the beginning of their lives as a family-when I first came to this country. That weight I can see, and I understand why they continue to celebrate it with my sisters and I. But for me, the meaning continues to slip away from me with each year that passes. Which is it, the beginning of my life in the US or the end of my life in Korea that I’m celebrating on my anniversary?

I hate the whole “Gotcha Day” reference. Not only does it feel like ownership, but it feels detached from the realities of what it means to be relinquished by one family and received by another. It’s a one-sided truth that feels phony and manipulative. My a-family never used this term, nor had they heard of it until I mentioned it once. But I have heard it from other adoptees who’s parents surely used it with them growing up.

It’s a lop-sided celebration, and I want for it to mean as much as it used to, but along with Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny and the wonders of being a child, I seem to have lost the so-called “magic” or “true meaning” of my Adoption Anniversary. Or did I really lose anything other than my disillusionment?

I suppose it’s just the thought that I’m no closer to finding my birth family than I am the previous year when I celebrate the day I arrive in this country. I’m one year further removed from my life in Korea where I was born.

What does your adoption anniversary mean to you? Do you know what day it is, do you celebrate or mourn it? I’m interested in comments from other adoptees.

-GS

First Teen Chinese Adoptee Conference

A friend of mine notified me about the first Teen Chinese Adoptee Conference which is being held Friday – Sunday, July 25 – 27, 2008, at Chinese Children Adoption International Headquarters in Centennial, Colorado.  It’s put together by the Chinese Children Adoption International which I believe is an adoption agency specializing in adoption from China.

The registration is $50 and is strictly for Chinese adoptees 13-19 years of age.  Program highlights include:  “Older adoptee panel discussion, creative projects, small group activities, mini Chinese Cultural Camp, Dragon Boat Festival, dance, games, and much more!”

Here are the details from their website.

China Adopteen Conference

Join us for the first conference designed especially for teenage adoptees from China – a conference where you will find connections, support, friendship, resources, inspiration, and lots of fun.

Chinese Adopteen Conference Website 

When: Friday – Sunday, July 25 – 27, 2008, at Chinese Children Adoption International Headquarters in Centennial, Colorado

Who: Adopted Chinese teens between the ages of 13 and 19, as well as adoptees older than 19, are warmly invited! If you are not yet 13 years old, we ask that you be turning 13 by September 30, 2008.

Program Highlights: Older adoptee panel discussion, creative projects, small group activities, mini Chinese Cultural Camp, Dragon Boat Festival, dance, games, and much more!

For more info you can email:

adopteen [at] chinesechildren.org

Phone: 303-850-9998
Fax: 303-850-9997

“Everyone wants a blue-ribbon baby, not the 4-year-old with AIDS, or the 10-year-old with one leg,”

Blue Ribbon babies, families calling for African babies that “look like Brangelina’s…” When is enough enough?!?!

It’s true, and despite the fact that international adoption numbers have been falling slightly in the more recognized sending countries like Korea, many children who are handicapped or disabled are passed over. It makes me start thinking about the whole debate over gene-therapy and the question of genetics that is on the table today. What would the world look like chasing the “Gattica” dream?

“I’ll take my child with blue eyes, athletic build, and an aptitude for the math and sciences…”

This is another issue regarding adoption I grapple with. The ability for some parents to not only look at photos and choose (in some cases) but the ability to decide they would like to wait for another baby. It’s this whole “blue ribbon” baby mentality that’s pissing me off. Babies up for adoption can not be compared to the hog that wins the blue ribbon at the county fair.  GS

————-
Newsweek
February 4, 2008
International Edition
Who Will Fill the Empty Cribs?;
International adoptions are on the decline, despite growing demand and an endless supply of orphans.

BYLINE: By Mac Margolis; With Mike Elkin in Madrid, Anna Nemtsova in Moscow, Alexandra Polier in Nairobi, B. J. Lee in Seoul and bureau reports

SECTION: SOCIETY Vol. 151 No. 05 ISSN: 0163-7053

LENGTH: 1825 words

For Anna Porras and Miquel Milian, The worst part is the waiting. Back in 2005, when the Spanish couple found they couldn’t have a biological child, they took it in stride and set out to adopt. But from where? There was a nine-year wait list for Spanish orphans, so Porras, a language teacher, and Milian, who runs a company that makes signs, took their search overseas. They had heard that adopting from China was relatively easy, but only for married couples. So they quickly tied the knot, filed the paperwork in late 2006, and held their breath. Then the rules changed; Beijing announced that couples had to be married at least two years before adopting.”We were crushed,” says Porras.Next stop: Kazakhstan, where the wait typically lasts somewhere between eight and 20 months. If all goes well, they will bring home a son or daughter by summer.

That’s an increasingly big “if.” After decades of nonstop growth, the international adoption mill has begun to stall. Driven by rising affluence, falling birthrates and resurgent national pride, many developing nations are much less willing to let their orphans go abroad. Not only can these nations increasingly afford to care for orphans at home, but they have been spooked by highly publicized international baby-selling scandals into tightening rules. Countries as diverse as South Korea, Russia, Kenya and Brazil now openly discourage foreign adoptions. As a result, intercountry adoptions have plunged 10 percent in the top five receiving nations–the U.S, Spain, France, Italy and Canada–since the high point in 2004, when 45,288 children were adopted internationally.

The turnabout is most dramatic in the United States; after nearly tripling from 1990 to 2004, international adoptions to America have fallen for three years running, dropping from 22,844 in 2004 to 19,411 last year. “Until now we’ve all been talking about the inexorable rise of intercountry adoptions,” says adoption scholar Peter F. Selman, a demographer at Newcastle University. “But around the world we’re seeing more and more people wanting to adopt every day, and fewer and fewer children available. The supply of adoptable children is drying up.”

Whether this is a crisis depends in part on where you sit. To nations like Russia and China, the dwindling “supply” represents rising standards of living and a growing ability to care for their own. But the need for intercountry adoption–which started after World War II as a way to provide for children orphaned or abandoned in the fighting–remains vital in many parts of the developing world that are not prospering, especially in Africa, where there are an estimated 48.3 million orphans. And now the hodgepodge of national restrictions has been joined by an international contract, the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption, designed to encourage adoption at home rather than abroad, and to end the international baby trade. The fear of many adoption experts, particularly in the West, is that these rules may prove so rigorous and indiscriminate that they will severely curtail international adoption as a vital escape route for children in troubled regions.

Supplies are dwindling from countries that have traditionally provided the majority of children for international adoptions. The number of Chinese children adopted by the top five receiving nations dropped from a peak of 14,493 in 2005 to 10,743 in 2006; in Russia the number has fallen from 5,829 to 2,781 since 2004. “Russian society is back on its feet both economically and morally,” says Elena Afanasyeva, a Duma deputy and member of the Committee on Women and Family. “We are now capable of taking care of our orphans.” In China the number of adoption applications now exceeds the country’s ability to process them. As a result, authorities have gotten much more choosy about who can adopt, excluding applicants who may be single, obese, taking antidepressants or over 50, among other things. Other source nations have implemented new restrictions to deter outsiders from adopting: South Africa now demands foreigners spend at least five years on native soil before adopting, and Tanzania three years. Moscow temporarily halted its international adoption program last year, partly in response to reports that 14 Russian children had been killed by their foreign adoptive parents since the 1990s.

In South Korea, which has sent 150,000 children abroad since the Korean War, it’s not just the booming economy that has changed social attitudes toward orphans. With a birthrate of just 1.1 children per woman, which is below the level required to keep the population steady, the country needs to hold onto its people. Last summer protesters gathered in downtown Seoul with placards that read KOREAN BABIES NOT FOR EXPORT! Today Seoul offers tax breaks, cash incentives and even extra vacation days to families who take in domestic orphans. The measures seem to be working: last year marked the first time since the Korean War that more South Korean children were adopted at home (1,388) than overseas (1,265).

The growing backlash against foreign adoptions is partly a response to exposas of aggressive networks of baby hustlers, in which unscrupulous middlemen charge prospective parents exorbitant fees while conning desperate families into giving up their children for a song. No country better illustrates the system’s potential for abuse than Guatemala, which had become a favorite of anxious adoptive parents, especially from America. They were drawn by the few-questions-asked system that dispatched infants in a matter of months. Gays, singles and unmarried couples were welcome. Inspired by the lack of regulations, a ruthless class of jaladoras (pullers) began trolling the city slums and impoverished countryside, sometimes buying babies cheap (or, allegedly, stealing them) and selling them dear. Foreigners shelled out upwards of $35,000 for a Guatemalan waif, with shadowy foster homes and crooked bureaucrats playing midwife to the exchange. In the words of David Smolin, a law professor at Alabama’s Samford University, foreign adoptions had turned into “baby laundering.”

Such abuses galvanized human-rights advocates and eventually led to the creation of the Hague convention. More than a decade in the making, the convention is designed to restore order, transparency and decency to the adoption process. Signatory countries vow to outlaw adoption for profit; to favor domestic adoptions over international ones; to carefully screen prospective adoptive parents, and to keep a tight rein on social workers, adoption agencies and the juvenile courts. Nations may no longer release a child to a foreign family without formal consent from the birth parents. “The business of selling babies is over,” says Rolando Morales, the Guatemalan lawmaker who led the fight to clean up adoptions in his country.

Though many countries immediately supported the treaty when it was first drafted in the 1990s, they have been much slower to implement it. No country could ratify the convention without first establishing a central authority to oversee adoption, and that was a challenge for some nations to pull off. China ratified the treaty only in 2005; Guatemala joined in 2002 but private adoption lawyers challenged it as unconstitutional. After a long national debate, the government finally passed implementation legislation late last year–though it remains unclear how well it will work. Even the U.S., which signed in 1994, only ratified the treaty in December, at least in part because it got so bogged down in transforming the state-run system into a federal one. But with 72 governments now onboard, momentum appears on the side of new regulation. “If the bureaucracy can end the trafficking and the bad matching, it will enable a future for intercountry adoptions which could otherwise be heading for collapse,” says Selman.

In the long run, the Hague convention could prevent abuses. But in the short term, imposing tougher standards, screening children and would-be foster families more closely and eliminating for-profit foster care may mean longer stays in orphanages for many children. And the treaty only applies to the countries that have ratified it; those that haven’t are free to do business as usual–even with those who have signed on.

There remain flaws in the system that even the best treaty cannot remedy. Orphanages everywhere are overflowing with severely handicapped or older children who often bear deep physical or emotional scars. “Everyone wants a blue-ribbon baby, not the 4-year-old with AIDS, or the 10-year-old with one leg,” says Selman. Some adoptive parents struggle to find effective treatments for their children’s ills; others seek to give them up. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recently found that 81 children adopted overseas were relinquished to foster-care agencies in 14 states in 2006.

In the vast majority of cases, however, foreign adoptions are successful. And for couples desperate to adopt, the shrinking pool of available children is frustrating. Some are turning to Africa, where AIDS, political instability and ethnic violence have taken their toll on families. In Kenya, adoption authorities say the recent upheaval has curtailed domestic adoptions, as parents wonder about each baby’s ethnic origin. Celebrity adoptions like those by Madonna and Angelina Jolie have certainly raised the continent’s profile. “Our phones were ringing off the hook with families saying, ‘We want a baby girl that looks like Zahara’,” says Cheryl Carter-Shotts, founder of Americans for African Adoptions, referring to the Ethiopian child whom Jolie adopted in 2005.

But interracial adoption, though increasingly accepted, still raises concerns in some circles. UNICEF has been a vocal proponent of keeping orphaned children in their home countries (next story). And many African countries, where extended families or tribes have traditionally taken in orphaned children, tend to be extremely wary of foreigners who show up to whisk off their young.

No one suggests that international adoption will solve the world’s ills. But until societies are able or willing to tend to all the victims of their own fractured families, overseas adoptions can continue to serve an important function, sparing tens of thousands of youths from potential neglect, abandonment, danger and a childhood spent between gray walls. “My heart breaks when I think of the conditions at orphanages, of the fate that waits for these babies,” says Olga Dereviagina, who cares for toddlers and babies at the infectious-diseases ward of Moscow’s Tushinsky hospital. “I wish foreign parents would come in now and take all our babies to some beautiful, kind place, to warm, loving homes.” That’s what Porras and Milian and countless couples like them wish, too.

“The Hanji Box”

Thanks to our friends at K@W for this tip.  -GS

—

Dear Friends & Members of the Adoptee/Adoption Community,

Since 2005, I have been working with an independent filmmaker, Nora
Jacobson, as a researcher & promoter on a film called “The Hanji Box.” As a
Korean-American adoptee with an extensive background in Korean orphanage
volunteer work, I provided some information about Korean adoption, orphans,
and orphanages. The movie is about an American adoptive mother goes to S.
Korea to discover her daughter’s birth story. It is the first ever US-Korean
co-produced film and stars Amy Irving (Anastasia, Carrie) and Baek Yoon-shik
(The President’s Last Bang) as well as Yunjin Kim (ABC’s “Lost”).

The film is in pre-production, and we are currently seeking investments (of
at least $10,000) to raise the remaining $1.2 million to necessary to
begin production. Filming will begin either this spring or fall. For an
early review, see Darcy Paquet’s article in Variety:
http://www.varietyasiaonline.com/content/view/4575/53/

Please see the attachment for more information and let me know if you, an
organization, or someone you know is interested in this investment
opportunity. Please also forward this message on to others who may be
interested. I am hoping that you can help connect me with either the
Korean-American or adoptee communities who may be interested in supporting
this film. We will pay a small finder’s fee for connections you provide that
lead to investments in the film.

Thanks for your assistance,

Aimee Jachym
(734) 308-6946

Fund-raising For Adoption

Thanks to K@W for this article tip.

It’s back to my old rant on fund-raising for adoption. There’s something that doesn’t sit right with me when it comes to raising money for adoptions. Whether they are prospective adoptive parents asking for charitable donations through blogs, or taking a loan out, it just doesn’t feel right. Granted, adoption is highly economically inaccessible, but you don’t see parents with biological children asking for money online.

It goes back to that age old argument that transracial adoptees are being “saved.” For many we’re talking about international adoption. It means that they are “saving” these children and so charitable contributions aren’t considered for what they are, they’re seen as philanthropic giving.

You know when you’re growing up as a kid and you ask your parents, “Mommy and Daddy, how much am I worth?” They always say “You’re priceless to us, there’s no amount of money that could ever add up to what you’re worth to us.” Ok, I understand, but somehow this statement doesn’t ring as true when there are large dollar signs above your head. Not to mention, I wonder what happens when these kids get older and they find the remnants of their parents’ fund-raising efforts online through blogs? It reminds me of those Visa advertisements about being priceless.

“Medical Examination fee $100, Processing Fee $200, Air Plane Ticket $600, Blog Fund-raising Fee $50…Not feeling like a commodity?…Priceless…”

http://www.adoptivefamilies.com/articles.php?aid=1371

As adoptees seek roots, states unsealing records

“Thomas Atwood, president of the council, which represents adoption agencies, says birth mothers were promised privacy and if that promise is broken, fewer women will choose adoption over abortion.”

I’m sorry, this is an incredibly weak and inflammatory statement. To say that open adoption records would lead to abortion over adoption? What about the adoptees who have taken their own lives wanting and needing to know more about themselves and where they came from?

It’s a fine line that we walk-weighing the privacy of our birth parents to the need to know as adoptees. Most of the time, the priority falls in favor of our birth parents’ wishes to be stay private until they see fit. I understand completely this need to conceal identity, especially in countries where mothers with children out of wedlock are looked down upon. I understand that domestically, birth parents, for their own reasons want or need that privacy to come to terms with the realities of relinquishment. I understand it’s painful. But just as painful as relinquishment is for birth parents I think it’s just as painful for adoptees who want or NEED to know more.

I whole-heartedly support the growing movement for open access to adoption records. Where’s the balance of b-parent privacy and adoptee open access? That has yet to be defined, and hopefully it will be soon resolved.

I sometimes think of how absurd it is that an 18 year old can fire a rifle yet can’t take a sip of alcohol. I am angered at times that I am afforded all the rights of a US citizen, yet I am denied a fundamental piece of information, my right to know about my birth family. And I think of people sitting behind desks at the adoption agency, who have information on my birth parents, guarding it, preventing me from knowing and I can’t help but feeling frustrated. -GS

———–

As adoptees seek roots, states unsealing records

By Wendy Koch, USA TODAY

When Maine state Sen. Paula Benoit got a bill passed last year, she got more than a new law: She found pieces of her past.

For years, Benoit, 52, had wondered about the parents who had put her up for adoption. That helped lead her to support a plan to give adult adoptees access to their original birth certificates. After the bill passed, Benoit learned the names of her birth parents and their hometown. She e-mailed a colleague, Sen. Bruce Bryant, who represents that area and supported her bill, and asked whether he knew them.

His reply: The deceased couple were his grandparents.

“Oh, for the love of God, I need to call him and say, ‘I’m your aunt,’ ” Benoit recalls thinking. “Can the world be any smaller?”

There was more: Bryant’s brother, Mark, serves in Maine’s House of Representatives — and had opposed Benoit’s bill. “It’s too open,” he says, adding that birth mothers expected privacy when they placed children for adoption years ago. He says he’s happy Benoit is in his family but worries the new law may force some birth parents into contact they do not want.

Three lawmakers, two points of view, one family.

As unusual as Benoit’s story is, the debate within her family over whether adult adoptees should be able to learn more about their backgrounds is echoing across the nation.

Last year, Maine was one of three states to pass laws to give such adoptees full or partial access to their original birth certificates — more than in any year since 2000, according to a USA TODAY analysis of state records. Massachusetts approved access for those born before July 1974, when records were sealed, or after January 2008. North Carolina approved indirect access through a state-appointed intermediary. When its law takes effect next January, Maine will become the eighth state to give adult adoptees full access to their birth records, which list birth parents’ names.

The controversial push to open adoption records is driven in part by the increased interest among many Americans in finding their ancestral roots. Many adult adoptees may be able to find their birth parents without an original birth certificate by searching databases and the Internet, but the official record makes it easier. Some adoptees want to establish a relationship with birth parents; others are more interested in family medical histories. Some don’t want to contact their birth parents, they simply want to know their past.

“For 52 years, I know I’ve been loved,” Benoit says of her adoptive parents, who are alive and support her desire to know birth relatives. Even so, she says, she wondered whom she looked like. She wondered why, despite diet after diet, she couldn’t lose weight. “Does obesity run in my family?” she’d ask herself.

“This is really about identity and the truth of a human being’s existence,” Darryl McDaniels, known as the rapper DMC, told lawmakers last month in New Jersey, where bills to open birth records have languished for decades. McDaniels, 43, learned at 35 that he was adopted and has since backed a bill to unseal birth certificates.

“We never start a book from Chapter 2,” he said. “As adoptees, we live our lives from Chapter 2.”

As the situation in New Jersey suggests, unsealing birth certificates often has been difficult. Bills to do so were proposed in at least seven other states last year but did not pass. Some proposals, such as those in New Jersey, have been stymied by opposition from the National Council for Adoption and some Catholic bishops, abortion opponents and civil libertarians.

Thomas Atwood, president of the council, which represents adoption agencies, says birth mothers were promised privacy and if that promise is broken, fewer women will choose adoption over abortion.

Despite the opposition, “the general trend is clear: Adoptees are being given access, state by state,” says Fred Greenman, legal adviser to the American Adoption Congress, which supports open birth records.

Greenman reconnected with his daughter in 1991, more than 30 years after agreeing to her adoption. The daughter’s husband made the first call and set up a meeting. “We spent the whole day at the dining room table talking,” he recalls. He says most birth parents welcome contact, as he did, and adoptees deserve to know their past.

Last year’s increase in access laws also reflects a larger trend toward openness in adoption, as more birth parents seek to stay in contact with kids they relinquish. “There’s far more acceptance of it being open,” says Herbert Brail, head of the American Academy of Adoption Attorneys.

That was not the case decades ago when many women, under the stigma of unmarried pregnancy, felt forced to relinquish their babies, says Ann Fessler, author of The Girls Who Went Away, a 2006 book about women who gave up children in the 1950s and 1960s.

Fessler, an adoptee, says many of the women she interviewed have “tremendous guilt.” She says they want contact with their children, and about half have it. The rest, she says, feel they have no right to it but wonder about their children.

Fessler, 58, says women in their mid-70s and 80s, are — like her own birth mother — often more reticent about a reunion. She wrote her 77-year-old mother a letter, then a postcard, and waited more than a year but got no response. So she called. “I was very, very nervous — kind of shaking,” she says. Her mother was friendly on the phone, so they met in person a few months later. “We chatted like crazy,” Fessler says.

Now, however, they have “minimal” contact. Her mother has not told her other three children about Fessler. “She’s still torn about whether she can come out about this,” Fessler says.

Eileen McQuade, president of the American Adoption Congress, says unsealing birth records has not created problems in the states that have done so — Alabama, Delaware, New Hampshire, Oregon and Tennessee. Two other states, Alaska and Kansas, have never sealed birth records. Delaware allows full access except when birth parents object.

Abortion rates have declined in the states that allow full access to records, as they have nationwide. Most birth parents in Alabama, New Hampshire, Oregon and Tennessee have consented to contact with their children or the release of records, according to records reviewed by USA TODAY.

After Oregon began releasing records in 2000, few birth mothers complained, says E. Wayne Carp, author of Adoption Politics: Bastard Nation & Ballot Initiative 58, a book on the state’s experience.

As each state opens records, others will follow, says Adam Pertman, executive director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, which favors unsealing records. “Success breeds success.”

A battle of legal rights

The legislative battles often pit an adoptee’s right to his or her birth certificate against a birth mother’s right to privacy.

“People have a right to their birth records,” says Marley Greiner, founder of Bastard Nation, a group pushing to unseal records.

There is no such legal right, Atwood counters, adding that birth mothers believe they were promised privacy when states sealed records. He says many won’t speak out because they have other kids or spouses who don’t know about the adoption.

Birth records were sealed not to give birth mothers anonymity but to protect adoptive parents from interference from birth parents, says Elizabeth Samuels, a professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law. She says some were sealed to protect adoptees from the stigma of illegitimacy.

If birth mothers or adopted children really want to find each other, Atwood says, they can list their names in registries set up by states.

Not all states have registries. Many that do make few matches, says Marri Rillera of the International Soundex Reunion Registry, which gives adoptees and birth parents free help in finding each other. In Texas, about 8,500 adoptees, siblings and birth parents have registered. One or two matches are made each month, says Patricia Molina, who oversees the registry.

“A registry is not the answer,” Rillera says. “Open records are.”

She says some companies charge thousands of dollars to search records and some adoption agencies charge $400 to $500 for non-identifying information about birth parents, such as age, medical history, ethnicity and religion. An adoptee’s search will be quicker and cheaper if birth records are open, she says. “Frankly, I’d like to be out of business.”

‘We’ve had mixed emotions’

At least 19,000 adoptees have asked for their birth certificates in Alabama, Delaware, New Hampshire, Oregon and Tennessee.

“I’ve seen a lot of people whose hands shake” when they get the record, says Melanie Orman, adoption coordinator for New Hampshire. She says many had met their birth mother or knew her name but wanted the piece of paper as a record of their past.

Birth mothers can be distressed. Orman got a call from an angry woman who said she was awakened at 11 p.m. by a call from someone who said, “You’re my mother.” She says the woman felt her privacy had been invaded.

“We’ve had mixed emotions: happy, sad, upset,” says Carolyn Jones, coordinator of post-adoption services at the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services.

Adoptees seeking birth certificates is “routine now,” says Carol Sanders at Oregon’s Center for Health Statistics. From June 2000 through November 2007, 9,571 adoptees sought records in Oregon. Of 564 birth parents who filed forms on whether they wanted contact, 85 said no.

“I’ve seen very few who say no,” says Dorothy Harshbarger, Alabama’s registrar of vital records. She estimates 95% of birth parents allow contact. She says a few complained after records were unsealed in 2000, but not many since then.

A dozen states provide partial access to original birth certificates, depending on the date of the adoption and the permission of birth parents. Another dozen allow indirect access through a state-appointed intermediary if birth parents agree. In other states, adoptees need court approval.

In Illinois, which allows access via an intermediary, 25% of the parents decline contact, says Nancy Golden, co-director of the Midwest Adoption Center, a group that does adoption counseling. She says the women may have kept the birth a secret or may fear anger from the adoptee. She says reunions usually are positive if people don’t expect too much. Still, she says the experience can be “overwhelming.”

Illinois state Rep. Sara Feigenholtz, who plans to sponsor a bill this year to fully open records, says she was in her 20s when she found her birth mother. The woman’s first response: “What took you so long?”

McQuade was 19, a college freshman, when she relinquished a baby girl in 1966. “I felt so powerless and shameful,” she recalls. She later married the father and had two more daughters, but they didn’t discuss their first child. “We hoped the pain would go away,” she says, “but it never did.”

Then came the phone call on Nov. 28, 1997, about 9:30 p.m. “I’m calling from New York,” a woman said. “I knew what it was immediately,” McQuade recalls. The caller, a friend of her first child, asked if the parents wanted contact. They did. The friend handed the phone to the daughter.

Mother and daughter spoke for the first time, neither sure what to say. McQuade started by telling her family medical information.

“It was kind of indescribable — terrified, excited, surreal,” says her daughter Kathleen Laing. “We e-mailed every day for a year. It was incredibly intense.”

They met in person the following July 4th weekend. “It was a complete roller coaster,” McQuade says, from joy and hope to sadness at missing so many years. She says their reunion is “a fairy tale come true” that prompted her activism.

Benoit says that after she began pushing to unseal Maine’s birth records, she asked a judge for her own. He said no. Later, to her surprise, she received a letter from the court that included her birth mother’s name. She still does not have her original birth certificate.

She says the Bryants invited her to a Christmas party and other get-togethers. “Our family is happy to know her,” Mark Bryant says.

Benoit says her birth mother was poor and about 50 when she was born, and did the right thing in relinquishing her baby. If her birth mother were alive, Benoit says, “Boy, would I love to put my arms around her and thank her.”

Asian Adoptee Film Festival in Hawai’i Seeks Submissions

Monday, Feb. 11, 2008

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: KAHI Film Festival Selection Committee, info@KAHawaii.org

HAWAI’I KOREAN ADOPTEES HOST FILM FESTIVAL ON O’AHU

International Participants to Gather in Honolulu in October

 

Korean Adoptees of Hawai’i (KAHI), a nonprofit organization based on O’ahu, is pleased to announce the first-ever Asian Adoptee Film Festival, to be held in conjunction with the Asian Adult Adoptee Gathering in Honolulu from Oct. 10-13, 2008. Screenings of films by artists adopted from Asian countries will primarily be held at the Doris Duke Theatre at the Honolulu Academy of Arts on Saturday, Oct. 11, 2008.

 

KAHI invites film submissions that are original works addressing the theme of adoption or the experience of being adoptees, either directed, written or produced by adult Asian adoptees. Films may be narratives, documentaries or features of any length. Multiple submissions are encouraged.

 

Entries should be submitted in DVD format no later than March 30, 2008, to:

 

Korean Adoptees of Hawai’i

ATTN: Film Festival Selection Committee

47-671 Hui Kelu Street, Unit 2

Kaneohe HI  96744-4627

USA

 

Entries will not be returned. For more information or for additional submission guidelines, please contact KAHI at info@KAHawaii.org, or visit www.KAHawaii.org/mini08.

 

The Asian Adult Adoptee Gathering and Film Festival is an event that has evolved from previous international gatherings of transnationally adopted Koreans, held since 1999 in locations including Seoul, Oslo and Washington, D.C., and smaller-scale gatherings in U.S. cities such as New York, Las Vegas, Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago and Minneapolis. This is the first-ever event of its kind to be held in Hawai’i.

 

The Asian Adult Adoptee Gathering and Film Festival is a celebration of the range of experiences – from the unique to the unifying – found among the diverse diaspora and global community of adoptees of Asian descent. The Gathering and Film Festival are expected to draw upward of 100 visitors from Hawai’i and the mainland United States, and such international locations as Sweden, Denmark, Australia and South Korea.

 

KAHI will also welcome members of the general public to the Oct. 11 film screenings, which will represent a unique aspect of the Asian-Pacific immigrant experience that has been historically underrepresented in the mainstream and even art-house film circuits. The Doris Duke Theatre will manage ticketing for this special event this autumn and will feature selected films in its newsletter.

 

Businesses, organizations and individuals interested in sponsorship opportunities for the film festival or the Asian Adult Adoptee Gathering are invited to contact KAHI for further information.

 

Korean Adoptees of Hawai’i (KAHI) is a nonprofit organization founded upon the experiences of adult Korean adoptees, working to build a supportive community in Hawai’i through public outreach, networking, education and sharing resources. KAHI believes in fostering awareness about adoption and identity, recognizing that we, as a community, can extend our reach beyond what we can accomplish individually.

Canadian Korean Adoptee Network (CKAN)

I just saw a post on the K@W list about CKAN, and thought I would put the word out about our friends in Canada.

Here’s a description about their organization:

“We are currently a group of five Korean adoptees (and counting…!) living in Toronto and its surrounding area, and Montreal. Most of us were adopted during the early 70′s and range in age from 31-37. Three of us have extensive volunteer experience in the adoption community in Ontario, working primarily with KCCA and Children’s Bridge. A few others have strong connections to the adoption community in the States, with such groups as IKAA and Holt Adoption Agency. We also have ties to Korean adoptees in Europe. Please feel free to email if you have any questions. We would love to know you’re out there!”

They are also looking for individuals interested in speaking on a panel at the Adoption Council of Ontario’s Spring Adoption Resource Exchange on April 5, 2008.

Check out their website: Canadian Korean Adoptee Network (CKAN)

EMAIL:  koreanadoptee.canada@gmail.com

Adoptive Fathers

It’s 9:30am in the morning and for some reason I’ve been scouring google with search terms like “adoption,” “transracial adoption,” etc.  Call it a hobby-Checking in on the millions of misinformed people that is.  I want to remain respectful of the fact that people are very much entitled to their own opinions.  In fact, I encourage many adoptive parents to honestly create dialogue with each other and hopefully with other adoptees.  But I can say firmly that there are just some things I can live with out.  Take for instance this blog I found that is created by adoptive fathers.  Four fathers blogging about their experiences with transracial adoption, their families and God.  I’m not much of a religious person, call it more “fairweather spirituality??”  In any event these fathers have a post that I wanted to share with you all.  They disclose the “positive” aspects of transracial families in this particular post. ”Transracial families:

• provide a bridge between two races
•  reflect in a small way the diversity that will be experienced in heaven
•  reveal the glory of God in diversity
•  are less likely to be color blind
•  are more focused on finding identity in Christ than in outward appearances
•  make adoption more visible bringing greater attention to the joy and the need
•  provide opportunities at a young age to talk about race
•  encourages love for all peoples despite their appearances at a young age
•  put the parents in a position to be extra-intentional in choosing friends, churches, books to read, etc.”

I really am not in the mood to really break all this down right now, it’s too early and my head hurts as it is.  These are all too common a-parental misconceptions.  Regardless of their good intentions, many of these very familial “positive traits” that they allude to provide nothing but confusing and contradictory statements.  

 

Can parents really divorce themselves from colorblindness by adopting a child of color?  I think not.  Can one still be racist or prejudiced EVEN if they say “But I have a friend who is Black, Native American, Latin@ or Asian?”  I think so.

 

It’s the very idea that one can remove their prejudice just by befriending a person of color, or expunge one’s colorblindness by adopting a child of color, that is a testament to the true blindness that exists within colorblind ideologies.  It’s absolutely wonderful that these a-parents are thinking about colorblindness as a debilitating concept-an ideology that they are attempting to transcend.  But to confront this powerful concept by tokenizing children of color, is in actuality performing the same colorblind based actions and decisions that they are trying to avoid in the first place.  

 

We’re not cultural ambassadors we’re not racial uniters.  We are your children whom you have adopted, and we didn’t choose to be a bridge to anyone.  To quote from Donna Kate Rushin’s “The Bridge Poem” in This Bridge Called My Back… 

 

“I’ve had enough  I’m sick of seeing and touching  Both sides of things sick of being the damn bridge for everybody…”  

 

 

“I do more translating than the Gawdamn U.N. Forget it  I’m sick of it. I’m sick of filling in your gaps…” 

 

 

“The bridge I must be is the bridge to my own power  I must translate  My own fears  Mediate  My own weaknesses I must be the bridge to nowhere  But my true self  And then  I will be useful.”

 

Thanks for reading as always – GS