Honestly I know that a lot of adoptive parents have experienced anger being unfairly directed at them from those birthparents and adoptees who have an extremely negative view of adoption, but there are also birthparents and adoptees who become targets of this hostility from the same angry groups as well. Those out there who have had what they feel to be a positive adoption experience, or that as birthparents feel confident in their decision to place, are also attacked by people with this negative agenda.

This evening I ran across a blog written by a first mother Shannon who is also an adoptee. If you read what she has to say, and also the article she wrote for the January 2007 Issue of Adoptive Families Magazine you will also see how she advocates for adoption reform and openness. You will also see how some angry people have come to her site and judged and belittled her for her beliefs concerning her own experience. Shannon is involved in an open adoption with her birth daughter and adoptive family and although she has had the expected issues and concerns she has retained a very positive outlook on her life. Despite this I noticed comments from people cutting her down repeatedly because she does NOT feel wronged, cheated or as if she made a poor decision for herself and her child. Obviously there are people out there for whom open adoption is working( just as for some it isn’t). And so what is wrong with that? Honestly I think for those who are angry to feel justified in their own extreme view they have to try and make others own it as well. They have a right to feel angry, but it stops when they presume to judge someone who does not. I say guess what, we all have our own unique perspective, no one person is going to “feel” the same about anything. We are all entitled to feel how we will about our own experience and should be respected and not harassed.

Since I began posting here on this issue I have been sent some less than positive comments about how “little” I know and what I am somehow Not doing to support women and mothers. That is something these folks know very little of as I have in the past and continue to support many friends and family who are birthparents as well as adoptees and adoptive parents. I have also been there to support women in my life NOT to place a baby for adoption. Sometimes my support has not been accepted and some of these people in my life have made choices that caused them further loss. That makes me very sad but it is a result of their personal choices and not anything I am doing or the effects of adoption in general.

The biggest thing I see is that the people who harbor such intense anger out there are actually doing more harm to those of us in similar situations to themselves than they are helping. This anger does not help me to raise my adopted children in the best way possible when it means people are cutting me down simply because of my adoptive mom status. I am supporting certain reforms and practicing openness to the best of my ability (in fact far more openness than most people I know). This anger is not helping women who have made an incredibly difficult choice to place a child to cut them down and tell them that they SHOULD be more angry and in more pain than they are. This anger does NOT help an adopted person telling them that in order to reconnect and be whole they must harbor anger for the parents who raised and loved them. They should be told the heart has enough capacity to love BOTH set of parents in their lives.

I have learned that persons from all walks of the adoption experience have met with the anger and negativity that comes from those who are so wounded they see no other way but to lash out. So far I have yet to see anyone that this is healing from that. Despite all the negativity I will continue to support reforms, better more ethical adoption practices, open adoptions and open records as well as education and parenting support for mothers just as I always have, no anger here.