Having Adoptee Remembrance Day isn’t just about remembering the adoptees that didn’t survive. It’s about the statistics of the attempted suicide rate of 4X. It also needs to be pointed out that I am one of those statistics It’s not just an adoptee statistic, it is a personal statistic with faces attached. We are not faceless, we are real and individual. Part of the problem of course is that we are only thought of as a group. We are, but we aren’t. I am one of many adoptees that have lived through this, but then there are adoptees that didn’t make it. There are too many. One is too many, but when we are 4X more likely to attempt, that’s disheartening.

I hurt talking about this but people need to see the reality of adoption. It’s not a love fest like society has been led to believe. It’s real and it’s painful and it’s complicated and it’s confusing. We are grateful but not for the reasons one would expect. We are grateful for having a roof over our head and food in our belly. We are not grateful for being paraded around for someone’s saviour complex or to make their infertility problems go away. You shouldn’t bring us into your grief, we have our own grief to work on. Our hidden grief. The grief that isn’t always allowed to be talked about. In fact as children we don’t even understand that we are grieving for the loss of our first family. We just vent our pain and trauma in unhealthy ways. Then we are told it’s because our birth mother was a drunk or a drug user. It’s always someone else’s fault and it’s not usually true.

if you still don’t understand why we try to die, maybe you should walk away from your family and change your name so they can’t find you. It’s like having amnesia and not having anyone in your life.

Please think about us before we are dead and another statistic. Please think about all of the adoptees that aren’t here anymore because they didn’t have the proper support. Please remember, just because an adoptee says they’re ok doesn’t always mean that they are ok. They’re usually too embarrassed that you will judge them. No one likes to be judged for appearing ungrateful.

I don’t have a lot of time left on earth but I hate that I’m missing out on something that I have never, and will never, be able to leave to my children when I die.

It’s actually quite simple too. I would love to be able to leave them something from my birth family. My adoptive family had nothing to leave for me and my children. They saved anything family related for their biological son.

I want an heirloom of some kind. Something that my birth family has held in their hands.

​Simple right? Not when you’re adopted.

I’ve been wondering lately what I like to read. Is there a genre, a style, a word count...what could possibly be the big pull to a ‘can’t put it down’ book? Over the last three years it’s obviously been adoption related memoirs. Then of course I’ve thrown in a few of the educational trauma books. The easiest thing I find though tend to be blogs. This is where Anne Heffron comes into the story.

When I fell apart 3 years ago I needed to do something to bring my brain back into some type of reality. I couldn’t keep crying all day, every day. It was getting tiring. I could only do so much of my family tree since I didn’t have a clue who my mother and father were. This is when I discovered Facebook groups that centred around adoption. I joined a few and heard about a few books that adoptees were recommending as necessary reads. You don’t look adopted was one of them.

I learned something about myself when I was reading it...it worked with my brain. I didn’t take notice of the reviews until after I was done with it. If I had, I may not of read it. People were complaining that her writing style was all over the place...funny how I didn’t notice that. In fact I couldn’t put the book down. My brain typically can’t focus on one thing for more than a minute or two. Her writing didn’t come across as all over the place to me. It came off as something that kept me in it.

Thank you Anne Heffron. Your book brought me back into reading after 30 years of darkness.

When I work on my family tree, part of the work involves searching for documents to prove the connection. I have found well over 1500 documents just for my maternal side. I have so much to do to make sense of it all but at least I have the proof.

With these thoughts of adoption and family trees I just now got to thinking about my adoption. I realize that by adding my paperwork to show my original birth certificate and the adoption transaction is the smart thing to do. It does scare me a little and makes my heart race a lot. I know I was told not to tell anyone about where I come from but I did it anyways. It helped my spirit to be able to reach out and connect with family. I’ve never had that belonging anywhere.

​Working on my family tree and finding a census that shows the land location of my two Great Grandfathers farm is life changing. It’s even more life changing when it also lists my Great Great Grandparents and numerous Great Aunts and Uncles from 1911.

Last night there was the usual discussion of abortion vs. Adoption on Twitter. Unfortunately I fell in, and I’d been doing so good to not get involved in that trap. The antichoicers believe that adoption is a beautiful choice. They don’t realize that as an adoptee you are not allowed to know your family tree. You can marry your birth father, birth mother, brother or sister and have children. Especially if your adoption paperwork has a veto in place. There’s no way for you to know that you are partaking in an incestuous relationship. This should be brought to light.

One of the best parts of Twitter is some of the people. I grew up with a child molester for a brother and would’ve loved having a brother stick up for me or even just be there. It is frustrating that I have brothers but I’m not allowed to contact them because my sister doesn’t want them to judge her mother. So I guess it’s a good thing I don’t have contact with them if this is how shallow they are.

in my search for listening ears I found someone on twitter that needed a hand up. He’s had one of the worst adoption stories. He is a late discovery adoptee. It has been so hard on him trying to feel like his adoptive family respect him but to feel they didn’t respect him enough to tell him as a child that he was adopted. He has been fortunate to have a relationship with his birth mother, father and siblings, but adoption still comes with a price for everyone involved. There are so many questions that he’s scared to ask because he doesn’t want to lose them again, but his mind is going wild with all the different scenarios. This is hard for me to give him the right answers to help since I will never be put in the position to be allowed to ask questions.

This man is now my brother. We are in sync with caring. He’s had a rough go lately and even his wife has had to remind herself to breathe. This is my brother from another mother, which makes it even weirder when you’re both adoptees.

How irritated would you be if you were told that you were ‘in the fog’ because you’re ‘happy’? I get being angry about being adopted, but I don’t get being called ‘spoiled garbage’ because I finally came out of the second stage of the fog. I am finally aware of my husband and my children and my grandchildren and that I am ‘happy’ to have them in my life. Does this make me ‘spoiled garbage’? I can’t help acknowledging my happiness for the people and things that make me happy. If I have to hide my happiness just so other people don’t call me ‘spoiled garbage’ then I am obviously going backwards. I am going back to my depression.

There is no way in hell I would ever say adoption was a happy experience for me. I sure as hell was not happy that I was rejected by my Aunts, Uncles, Brothers, Sisters, Cousins, Mother and Father. Just by living with that reality will never give me a happy soul. Why should it? How could it?

Reading about anger only brings me down. Is that normal for everyone? Or does reading about anger make people happy? Why live with anger all of the time? Why question someone when they are in a happy place? Why try to bring someone down for how they feel. If you are afforded a moment to voice your anger then maybe you should reciprocate. It’s called give and take. I am now in a place that I can give more but I will only take so much. If it harms me, it harms my loved ones.

The other day my husband read my post and texted me right away to ask if Mary was having a bad day. I said “everyday is a bad day for Mary”. He understood. I don’t want everyday to suck but sometimes it is what it is. It is in my power to ‘move on’, no one else can force me to, but I believe once in awhile I need to be gently reminded. It is natural to need to be helped up once in awhile. When I read certain posts on social media I get the feeling that some people don’t want anyone to interfere in their anger. They want to wallow in it. I know there isn’t a guideline for venting but I also know it’s not right to say I’m ‘spoiled garbage’ because I’m happy. I wish my brain wouldn’t take negative things personally but as an adoptee it’s the first place I go. It’s what I know.

I discovered a ton of new documents to add to my family tree. I am so glad I can finally contribute to my children and their children. The stories that they finally have to tell means the world to me. At least when I die they won’t be clueless like I have been.

This gives the land locations of 2 of my Great Great Grandfathers and my Great Grandfathers land. In 1926.

This is where my grandfather lived as well.

It’s crazy how I came from being born in Langley hospital and moving all the way out to the same district as my birth family. Before I even knew. I’m so glad they have welcomed me into the family. I don’t know how I could’ve survived moving closer to my birth mother and being rejected. I’m sure that would’ve put me over the edge. As it was traumatic enough to put me in the hospital, at least I lived to talk about it. All I want now is for adoption to quit happening.

Or better yet...how is it ok to think that pointing a finger at someone for doing the exact thing that you vent about is the right way to get your point across. Why call someone out for feeling uncomfortable with you and then turn around and say that ‘you’ are always being ‘tone policed’? Just by putting my name out there and trying your best to silence me or calling me out as a liar just goes to show that you are trying to minimize my feelings. I know what I felt and I know what I was told by others about how they felt about having you in our private group. I did what was best for the group and when you put my name out there to say that I was in the wrong, I know for a fact I did the right thing by removing you. Now you have publicly posted that it was wrong of me to try to protect our privacy. You have shoved all of the adoptees in the group back to the dark place where they are scared to say anything because people like you have proven that their feelings don’t matter, and that they can’t share anything privately. You have proven to us that we are only allowed to bury our feelings just as we did/do with our adopters and society.

Putting my name out there doesn’t prove anything, especially when I have never used your name. The only people that know what’s going on are your followers. It would surprise me to think that there are people out there that will only read your side of the situation and not the whole situation. Of course you will only post the screenshots that make you look like you’re being picked on. How does this help adoptees? This is more like something that an angry unforgiving individual would do. Someone who refuses to grow. Someone who just wants to play the blame game.

I want to learn and I want to be able to publicly talk. I don’t want to be pushed back into the corner like you are trying to do to me. Lord knows you have done this to multiple people, adoptees, adopters, adoptors and birth parents.

If you don’t have anything nice to say with my name then don’t say anything at all. As you worded it “TAKE MY FUCKING NAME OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MOUTH”