Searching for Records and CAL AB 372

California AB 372. I will get to that in a round about way.

I am in a foul mood and so I am going to say some things that will surely piss people off. I don't care who I piss off anymore. Some adoptees are cool, calm and collected. I'm not. Not today. Last night I went to my local Latter Day Saints Family History room to look at the Birth Registry for my birth year from the city I was born in. I had discovered I could order it and waited for about a month to get it. They set me up on a film viewer and I wound through the microfilm to get to my name on my current B/C. Mine was a family "adoption" so I wondered if my name was changed. These records of B/C only give certain info. Last name, first name, month, day , year of birth, borough of city the birth took place, and the last 5 numbers of the b/c reg. Parents names are not given. So I found my name in the records and it matches my current B/C #. In my case, that told me that I apparently was acknowledged by my paternal family and given my first name at birth. But as I was winding through the tape an odd-looking page jumped out at me! A page with maybe 80 "Smith Female" names (tonight I will count the number exactly). Keep in mind that on an ordinary page there are a few babies named "female" or "male" rather than given a First Name. Usually married parents name their children before filing for a B/C. My "half-brother", also a bastard, sent me his page and he is named "male" but with his first mother's real last name. OK, so I think I can assume that most of these unnamed Smith babies were born to single mothers and likely many of those, if not all, were put up for adoption (we're talking baby scoop era). But the unnamed "Smiths" outnumbered the named Smiths! That is statistically not right!!!! Obviously many of these "Smiths" were single mothers who gave a common false name in order to protect their own fucking name. And lo and behold, of the five "Smith Females" born in my month, there was one born on the same day as me! And surprise, surprise, also in the same borough of the city. This birth certificate number is 250 numbers before my named number. My named b/c is stamped that it was filed three days after my birth; this seems a little weird to me, that an unnamed Smith born in the same borough and on the same day as me, would get a b/c number 250 numbers lower than my number. And I was born on a Saturday to boot!!! So one would assume that no b/c's would be filed until Monday. So how could "Smith Female", born on the same day as me, end up with a number 250 lower than mine? Are we the same person? Was a new b/c made for me after my natural mother died (when I was 3 weeks old) and at that point my paternal family acknowledged me, named me and got a new b/c issued for me? By the way, the doctor who signed my B/C is famous and named in The Girls Who Went Away; he was involved in a case that went to the Supreme Court and was the predecessor to Roe v. Wade. And he lived in the same town and went to the same college, graduating within a year of my real maternal aunt's husband. An Ivy League College. These people had power and money. I wish I could blow this whole thing out of the water and make a big stink. I could if I had a voice and not sure I have the energy to do it on my own. So tonight I am going back to look at all the babies born in my month and borough (means going through the tape alphabetically and writing down numbers) so I can see if my current B/C number is surrounded by other babies born on my day, or is it surrounded by babies born a few weeks later. And why am I so pissed? Because to have to do this is BULLSHIT. And to have to wonder at what the FUCK happened and why it happened to me, is incredibly painful and crazy-making. And to think that the FUCKING state fucked around with my records and my identity makes me FURIOUS. It has been more than months since I sent the letter to the state where I thought the adoption would have taken place (if an adoption in fact did take place), giving them all the information I know, at the direction of a woman who told me I could find out that there was an adoption if I did this. And no reply. Not even an acknowledgment that my letter was received. This is a different state than where I was born. But now it appears to be a possibility that the state I was born in did a big cover up and perhaps there was no official adoption. To make it even nuttier, my secondary mother wrote a story about how they found and bought the out-of-state property she stole from me (which I am certain was in my first mother's family - and is in yet another state of course). This "story" of hers is actually in public records in that state, because she tried to sell the property to a state conservation group and wrote this story and another one about the history of the property when it was this old hunting club. In her story about "purchasing" the property, and that is what it is, a fucking pack of lies story, she says the "former owner's daughter, Mrs. Smith" took them out in a boat to show them the lake. I kid you not. Mrs. F'in Smith!!!! I need a publisher. The tangled web of lies and deceit they wove is just too much for me to handle!!! I AM TELLING THE GOD'S HONEST TRUTH AND HAVE RECORDS TO SHOW AND PROVE IT - I AM NOT A CRAZY NUT!!! In the end they didn't sell the property to the conservation group, but to a cousin of one of the board of directors of the state conservation group. If I said her last name everyone of you would know it because it it is a very well known name and the name of a multi-million dollar company owned by this family which is like the biggest name in the state. The name is synonymous with the state.

So back to California. Why the fuck will a state protect the fact that a fucking sperm swam up the vagina of a woman 20, 30, 40 , 80 years ago(before she was married - OH HORRORS!) at the expense of a HUMAN BEING who lives and breathes NOW and wants to know who they are, where they came from, who they look like, who they are related to, what illnesses may run in their family, where their talents, likes and dislikes may have come from and where they fit in this world? Why is the protection of the name of the woman who literally "got fucked" so much more important than the needs of the person who was produced? Why is 20 minutes of young love/sex and its participants protected over the lifetime of the HUMAN BEING ADOPTEE that was produced? Is the fucking BIRTH mother a fucking saint now or something? I am so damned pissed right now I don't care who I offend and what words I use. BIRTH MOTHERS got their protection and gave up rights when they gave their babies away. Now the babies have been raised, which was the point of the adoption, wasn't it? To give a baby to a family that wanted to raise a baby, who otherwise wouldn't have been able to have a "cute bundle of joy". Now the adoptee is an adult, 18 or 80 years old. WHAT IS THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA doing putting a birth mother's "wants" over their adult offspring's rights? Why should anyone's permission be given before another citizen gets their original birth certificate? I am sorry, I understand mothers were forced to give babies away, or mislead, and some have lead pained lived because of that. But get real. The babies given up to adoption are now adults. The products of certain sexual encounters got adopted. They are still human beings who deserve the same knowledge about their origins and right to OBC as non-adopted human beings. Why does California think the birth mother's rights 20, 30, 80 years after the adoption supersede the adoptees?

What is California hiding in their records? A passel of "Smith Female" and "Smith Male" babies? And if I used the word "Fucking" too much for some of you, too fucking bad!!! When you get right down to it, fucking is what started this whole ball of wax rolling. Yeah, FUCKING and Adoptee Rights and OBC go together in my book!!! Get over it.

Mothers and Children

Mothers is the subject of the week. And to be a mother, a baby is needed.

I remember a dream I used to have when I was about 19. This might have been related to the fact that I was then having sex and so pregnancy was on my mind. The dream, which I had on a repetitive basis for many months, was terrifying. Suddenly I would remember that I had a baby, but I couldn't remember where I had left it. I knew that I had not fed it in a while and that I had to find it. The feeling was purely frantic as I searched rooms to no avail, knowing that I had been irresponsible and forgotten my baby.

Another memory is that as a child, for some odd reason, I used to look along the roadside as we drove, thinking that I might see a baby thrown out and abandoned! Still to this day, if I see an oddlooking trashbag or blanket alongside the road, it crosses my mind that a baby might be in it!

After I had my first baby, it was by C-section, my husband brought her alongside me and held her and I thought she was the most beautiful baby I had ever seen. As the epidural wore off, I was given morphine and went to sleep. When they brought my daughter to me, my first reaction was that she did not look like the baby I had seen in the operating room and I feared she had been switched!!!

I think being raised by people that were not my biological parents has had a great effect on how I parented my own children. I was very protective of my children when they were young. But I also realize now, that as they grew older I expected more of them in the way of being self-reliant than many other parents did. I allowed them more freedom as teenagers than many other parents around me. Fortunately they handled it responsibly, but in retrospect I think my "parents" didn't really parent me as a teenager and so I am unsure of how to do that. They had pretty much disengaged as parents by the time I was 12 or so. Or perhaps that was because that was when I disengaged as their child and got it that I was essentially parentless in the world.

Interesting thinking about these things. And Mother's Day has never been a very good day for me, despite the fact I love being a mother myself. It always rings a little hollow to me because I am reminded of the lack of a mother in my own life.

Interesting NY Times Article about B/C's for Stillborn Babies

Here is a link to an interesting article, though from NY Times 2007, about 16 states allowing birth certificates for stillborn babies.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/22/us/22stillbirth.html

Mothers of stillborn babies successfully had this passed in 16 states despite running into opposition from, you guessed it, anti-abortionists. Language had to be carefully crafted so b/c's would not be issued for aborted fetuses! And many states were worried about the FRAUD of issuing a "birth" certificate for a child not born alive. Of course states have no compunction about falsifying records and the resulting fraud committed when changing up facts on a LIVING BREATHING adoptee's birth certificate. AMAZING.

I completely get why a mother of a stillborn child would want something more than a death certificate and it seems a humane thing to do to issue a birth certificate when a child was born, though sadly born dead. But why will states not offer the same level of humanity to an adoptee? The operative word for making it just fine to discriminate against us and not grant us equal access is likely one that begins with a great big scarlet B! All we want is acknowledgement of our original selves, our original mother's and father's existance. Is that so hard to understand?

Mr. President, Open Adoptees "X Files" Please! We live on Earth!

"The fact that we are not alone in the universe is one of the more important questions to man." ~ Edgar Mitchell, former Apollo astronaut

"What I know is there is life here on Earth." ~ President Obama

"The government should open the files, the American people can handle the truth." ~ (didn't catch who said that, anyone know?)

Quotes from the morning news today on CNN. All regarding the question of the government withholding information about close encounters with UFO's and aliens over the years. UFO activists with spokesman Edgar Mitchell are asking for President Obama to open the X Files.

I would suggest that the government's withholding of adoptee's "X Files" is the same! All the above quotes apply to adopted human beings "here on Earth!" And so we have been put in a similar position as aliens. And in fact that is often how we feel - like aliens on our own planet. We are put in a different position than non-adopted humans. We are denied knowing the truth by being denied our original birth certificates which are held in our X Files.

Holiday Blues

Why is it that holidays always make me feel so empty? It used to be that there was a big letdown at the end of the day, after finding joy in the beginning. Now I expect the letdown so don't look forward to the day to begin with. Damn depressing.

Stigma 2009

In the last few months, I have finally come out of the fog of who I thought I was and into the light of knowing who I really was, or at least I have come to accept my true place in the family - that of the well hidden bastard. And so I have been talking to friends about this aspect of me which I never before revealed to them and ultimately kept the secret so well I kept it from my very self. And with my new sense of self (though freshly "dug in"), I recently revealed my truth to someone who I have known for over 20 years, though our "friendship" was more an intersecting of our children's friendship than a real connection. And so now I know why I never really thought of her as a friend. Her first response to my revelation of being a bastard was "Are you going to tell the girls?" Meaning my daughters, who are 16 and 23. And I immediately went back to that old place of shame. Because she was thinking this information should surely be kept from my daughters. Though the shame quickly turned to righteous indignation (the "roots" have taken hold!). And after I recovered from the shock of her question, I looked her straight in the eye and said "Of course they know now. Why in the world would I hide it from them?" And it occurred to me later, that as a child I had really gotten it; gotten the truth of how the world would view this aspect of me. Because if there are people who in 2009 who think I should hide this fact from my own children, imagine the response I would have gotten in the 1960's! And I see that I had an advantage over many adoptees. Being raised within my biological family, and looking like them, allowed me to "pass" as a legitimate family member. Though not all adoptees are bastards, back then almost all bastards would have been adoptees. I am thankful to have emerged from the dark ages of bastardom, though there are still those needing enlightenment.

Doctor Shocked to Learn Adoptees Birth Certificates Speak Lies

I learned something very interesting last week. People who aren't familiar with adoption on a personal level have no idea our birth certificates are lies sanctioned by the state! This old friend of mine asked to see my birth certificate and was shocked it looked just like his! He thought it would reference my adoption. He couldn't believe it listed my secondary parents as giving birth to me! And this made me realize how you have to explain everything to non-adopted people in order for them to get it. We had been discussing my family secrets and all that went with it for several days while he and his wife were visiting us, and it wasn't until the morning they were leaving he finally understood what I had been talking about all weekend - lies predicated on lies predicated on lies. And this guy is a doctor! His wife knew these things because she has a friend who was adopted and searched. She too was shocked her husband didn't know how adopted people's birth certificates are changed to show the adoptive parents as giving birth! He thought my birth certificate would say "adopted" on it but would list my real parents' names. He said he never thought much about it before. He was absolutely flabbergasted that my birth certificate is full of falsified information.

Oddly, I found out that he was separated from his mother for 5 months after he was born because his mother had contracted hepatitis in the hospital. Friends of the family took him home with them while his mother fought for her life in the hospital. I think I do have some attraction to people separated from their mothers! Both of my husbands were adopted. I read some post somewhere recently about adoptees having radar for other adoptees. Adoptee-dar they called it!

My old friend went to the brother school to the girls' school I went to for high school. We were good friends back then and always stayed in touch through the years. He and his wife married about the same time my husband and I married and our oldest children are about the same age. I recently revealed to him, in a phone call, my birth situation, which I had, of course, kept a secret from him and all others. He wondered why I had never told him about it. Within a week they were visiting us. In retrospect, it is amazing I never shared myself with friends and kept the secret so completely. I suppose it was too painful to share. Going to the private girls' school, in another town from where I lived, was a fresh start for me. The one friend who I had shared the picture of my other mother with when we were about 5 or 6, and who I considered to be my "best friend" throughout elementary school, told our friends in 8Th grade that I could be adopted. Immediately I was ostracized. Girls are really very bitchy at that age. Excluding me from their clique (girls I had grown up with since kindergarten) made life miserable. I didn't want to risk the same happening at my new school I suppose.

Mourning Handkerchiefs and My Memories

I don't know how my brain is making these connections anymore. But I just got it. A very big got it. The picture I had of my "other mother" who had died when I was a baby, I kept it in a box of hankies, or handkerchiefs that my "grandmother" gave to me at Christmas. It is my first Christmas memory as a child and in the house that my secondary family lived in before my secondary father (really half-brother) and my secondary mother (his wife) moved to my natural father's house after he died when I was 2 1/2. But now I think I might have had Christmas with my maternal side of the family. I do remember being very excited to come down to see what Santa left under the tree. But the only present I remember was this box of 3 hankies. A pink, a yellow, a blue. And now I know the picture of my mother was under them from the beginning. A conscious effort from my maternal first grand-mother to ease my pain and hers too, I suppose.


It hit me for some reason a few moments ago, that there was such a thing as a "mourning handkerchief." I looked it up on the net.

"Mourning Handkerchiefs (Image not available, 7/23/96)
These black bordered handkerchiefs were an essential accessory to the proper mourning costume. The width of the borders varied, depending on how long one had been in mourning."

My maternal first grandmother was born in the late 1800's, so she would have been aware of these customs. Her family was quite prominent and all that goes with that, proper etiquette and all. Those hankies she gave me at 2 1/2 were my "mourning handkerchiefs" and she put the picture of my mother, Dorothy, in the box with them so I wouldn't forget her. I suppose a child would not get a black bordered handkerchief. Or if I did get one of those too, I don't remember it. But a picture of my dead mother in a box of handkerchiefs to me from my grandmother. It makes sense. Yes a 2 year old does remember her mother and her grandmother eventually. Her real mother, her real grandmother. The memories are there. I am not crazy. Just finally coming out of the dark place. Into the light. No more darkness now.

And that was my grandmother who gave me cookies in Maine, while the adults made the deal using my mother's property with my secondary parents to raise me. She told me not to forget. I did. I was in the middle. Collateral. And I worked at the camp business they had on my mother's property, to help them make money so their older children could go to college. And when my secondary father died I kept working so my secondary mother could have income. And they gave me nothing but shit. No college. No home. She had 3 cottages and a dozen bedrooms in my dead mother's home and she made me and my first husband live in a shitty old trailer with no plumbing or running water, though I begged her for a bedroom in The Castle. Nothing from either house to me. The only thing I got was my bedroom furniture which now I realize my secondary father bought for me with some hidden trust fund my maternal grandmother left. That was my present for Christmas when I was 13, now I realize that was 4 months after her death. And I guess they used the rest up on our "family vacations" to the islands in the winter. So there was no college money left for me and no home. I know I am whining. I know I have a chip on my shoulder. I know I have to get past it. I will.

I want my original birth certificate. I want to know if they changed my first name. I want to see Dorothy and John listed as my parents. I want to go to my death with that name, those names, the real me.

Philadelphia Adoptee Rights - July 21, 2009

We're going to Philly with fists up! Power to the People! I'm starting to feel the old '60's spirit again as I approach age 60!!!

JULY 21, 2009

The more people who show up to support our rights to our original birth certificates, the more impact. Click on this and be inspired to mark the date and come:

http://adopteerightsphilly.blogspot.com/


Then pass it on...........

The (Year)Book of Life

The weirdest thing happened. I still find it incredibly hard to believe, but alas, just one more strange tale in the book of life. But it has been such a spiritual experience I actually feel 100% better about things. Thank God for small miracles!!!

A brief recap - my bitch of a secondary mother ended up with my dead first mother's family property in some "raise-the-baby/get the land" deal and recently sold it (MY MOTHER'S HOME) without even telling me, for several million. Yeah, I didn't get to be raised by my mother because she died when I was 3 weeks old, so my half-brother raised me for his father because he died when I was 2. Then my half-brother died when I was 19 and his bitch wife, my secondary mother, stole everything that was mine. So both my first father's house and my first mother's house ended up in her hands. Anyway, I was thinking about my half-brother's high-school yearbook for a while and wondering what happened to it. He and his wife both graduated the same year from the same high school.

So a few weeks ago I was on eBay and I put the name of the high school in the search. Lo and behold there is a yearbook from their class year for sale! Wild!!! So I put in a low bid and won it. Then I had issues with PayPal so thought I lost it, but how many people really want this old yearbook from the 1930's, so it was still there for me when I straightened things out and bought it. Then, in my typical forgetful way (!), I forgot about it.

So yesterday it arrived. I opened it up and there is my Bitch Secondary Mother Lorna's name on the "Ex Libris" label on the inside cover!!! HA!!! I got her old yearbook back!!! Her book, with all the signatures from classmates. A funny one was. "To a swell girl. Watch out for B!" B. was my half-brother, or secondary father. I got something of hers for just about nothing! And she has no idea I have it!!! For some sick reason this makes me very, very, happy!!! And I don't even care if it IS sick. I have my own little secret on her now. I feel like the restitution may have begun. And I might be able to get to more of the family stuff if they can track down where this came from. I'm sure it was in my father's house (where I grew up) when that house was sold. They probably just sold the contents of the attic to some estate purchaser. There was some great stuff up there that belonged to MY FATHER.

So, you see, for me it is not about the money, but the sentiment!!! The bitch's old yearbook in my hands is worth a million bucks. I wonder what else I can conjure up!

"A Slut Just Like Your Mother"

When I was a senior in high school I came in after "curfew" from a Saturday night date with my boyfriend. It wasn't like I had stayed out all night, but maybe it was midnight and my "curfew" was 11:30. In those days, no one had cell phones, so if you were "necking" too long on "the cliffs" (where cars parked), you couldn't call home and give your parents a reasonable excuse for why you were going to be late! Keep in mind, I was an A student, the President of our student government, and worked in our family business, so a kid who gave no one trouble. But I was a teenager with hormones like everyone else! I had a nice boyfriend, also a good student from a nice family who was very polite to my parents. We had been dating a couple of months, but had not gone "all the way". I wasn't "in love" with him. In those days, "being in love" was a prerequistite to sex - odd as that might sound to the younger generation! Anyway, I remember being relieved when we drove up and I saw the house was dark and realized my parents were not "waiting up" and in bed already with the lights out. So I quietly "snuck" up the stairs, saw their bedroom door closed and then went up the attic stairs to my room. I was just about to get in bed when I heard the footsteps. My secondary father was coming and in the room before I could take a breath. "Where the hell have you been?" I was terrified and don't even remember my response. I probably said something lame like "Out". The next thing was a slap across my face and he said, "You're a slut, just like your mother." I remember saying "Don't call Mommy a slut; why are you calling Mommy a slut?" I didn't even care that he thought I was a slut. Mommy was my secondary mother and I was defending the woman! The woman who inflicted incredible psychological cruelty on me to get me to accept her and forget my first or "other mother" (I called her that when I was little). I didn't even get it that he was talking about my first mother. He said something back, I'm not sure what, and left.

Oranges and Lemons

Reading back to my new year's hope. I hoped for a new head on my shoulders! How intuitive of me!!! Probably because even though it didn't get chopped off with the Butcher Game 50 years ago (that I remember at least), its a bit hard to get around with a head and no shoulders (which definitely were chopped off). I actually have a letter my "sister" wrote to me in 1991 about the Butcher Game. I think she was perhaps trying to see if I would remember it and my associated loss of the memory of my first mother. I kind of remembered the Butcher Game, just not the reason our "mother" played it. My "sister" said it was part of a nursery rhyme but our "mother" used it to terrorize. She also said my mother used to sing "Rock-A-Bye Baby" to me but with grisly things happening to the baby and when she expressed shock my mother told her I was too young to understand and the melody would put me to sleep. My "sister" is 10 years older than me. She wanted us to sue my mother for psychological cruelty inflicted on us when we were children. I don't think she is adopted, but apparently she was also terrorized by Lorna. Or she told me that anyway. Lorna is insane. So I looked for the butcher game rhyme on the internet and found it. Here is the rhyme:

ORANGES AND LEMONS

"Oranges and lemons", say the bells of St. Clement's
"You owe me five farthings", say the bells of St. Martin's
"When will you pay me?" say the bells of Old Bailey
"When I grow rich", say the bells of Shoreditch
"When will that be?" say the bells of Stepney
"I do not know", says the great bell of Bow
Here comes a candle to light you to bed
And here comes a chopper to chop off your head!

Yup. That was it. Only I think she said "Butcher to chop off your head!" I forgot all the nice bells of the Saints part. I wonder why. Yeah. Who cares about what a friggin' bell says after your body has been parsed away on a nightly and repetitive basis. Or when anyone will pay you or when you'll grow rich!

And it occured to me again today, as it has in the past, that I am very disconnected from my body. I could never dance freely and envied those who could. I knew there was a clinical reason for this and it was abnormal. I also reside in my head. I don't know if that makes sense to anyone else. I asked my husband this morning if there was one area of his body he felt his being was in and he said "Not really." He has his own demons, but they are not the same as mine. My head is me. I used to think this was because I am analytical and think things through. But now I think it is more that I saved my head when I was 6 and the rest of me was cut off routinely every night. Also interesting to me now is that when I was diagnosed with PTSD in 1989 (after the doctor who performed a D&C after a miscarriage mistakenly perforated my uterus and sucked out/had to then chop off my fallopian tube) I use to call him "the fuckin' Butcher"!!! But I think a lot of women would have come up with that name if it happened to them. I think that experience simply reignited my old traumas.

I am hopeful now I know where and how the disconnect came about, I might be able to connect back up with my lost self! WOW! I wonder what that might feel like? It must be great to feel whole. I can't even imagine it. We used to sing a song in elementary school about the bones all being connected to each other. Very confusing song which took a lot of memorizing to get right. Your foot bone's connected to your ankle bone or something like that. We had to point to the bones as we sang and I could never get the singing, the bones and the pointing synchronized. We also did the pat the head and rub the tummy thing and that was impossible. But most people had trouble with that. We did these things in gym of all places! Enough of memory lane!

Attachment Therapy

I viewed another attachment therapy video this morning. It was surreal to watch. The "therapist" was using a photo of the little boy's dead mother and blaming him for having her in his heart still and not loving his adoptive mother. When my secondary mother played the Butcher Game with me 50 years ago it was in response to my attachment to a photo I had of my own dead mother. Please visit these links. It is criminal for this to continue in the name of helping children.

On Monday, February 9, 2009 I posted about The Butcher Game. You can see from my blog what happens in later life to people who as kids were traumatized to attach to their secondary or adoptive parents and to forget their original parents. Any adoptive parent who does this is an extremely selfish person and only thinking about their own immediate needs and gratifications. These inflicted traumas must be dealt with eventually. If you care about the adult your adopted child will become, please do not go near an atttachment therapist with a 10 foot pole. The healthiest thing for your children is to love them unconditionally, be patient with them for they are children who YOU have taken on and as a parent your obligation is to their long-term growth. THERE ARE NO QUICK FIXES. Look at the videos of attachment therapy and think about how you would feel if you were the child. Do you really want to gain attachment and love from a child by abusive torture? Respect and love must be earned over time. You have the rest of your lives to attach through love, patience and understanding. If this child is more than you can handle, do not break their spirit with attachment therapy because in the long term it will lead to detachment. These so-called "therapists" are way off target and are quacks and sadists.

Here are some links to explore further:


http://childtorture.wordpress.com/what-you-can-do-to-help/

http://www.tearwater.com/files/searchforsurvivors.htm

http://copperbadge.livejournal.com/2415873.html

http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/at.html

Better Reality Check!

A better "reality check" for me: dishes and DUZ detergent! Oh the memories - meatloaf and Shepherd's Pie was served on these as a kid. Haven't seen either of those on the menu lately! As a vegetarian I do love the wheat shafts though!



Golden Wheat soapbox dishes DUZ small fruit bowls
Collectibles: Tableware › Item

On Religion #2

Looking back at yesterday's post. Funny how "Bible Stories" are my "Reality Checks"!!!

Because I am so unreligious! Although I am not prepared to call myself a "non-believer". And I really don't like the term "Christian" either. I suppose I am safely Agnostic. That was my secondary father's view too. He called himself an agnostic because as much as he disliked church religion, and in particular the pomposity and hypocrisy of the holier-than-thou types, he could not rule out "God" entirely. And of course that is the "safe" approach (as a religious and "Christian" cousin pointed out) since if there is in fact a God at the end, who greets you at the Pearly Gates (if you in fact end up in that high end real estate location), then you can truly say you are not a non-believer, you just simply were not so sure, an Honest Wonderer. And confronted with St. Peter and the Big Guy, now you See that you were in fact Wrong, you should have believed! That might get you kicked down to some less heavenly location, (I do believe you must "BELIEVE" before you arrive in order to remain in Heaven) but probably not all the way down (if you know what I mean). That is a Lapsed Catholic's view of Agnosticism if ever there was one!

Reality Checks

So I found the series of 1950's Bible Books for children that I discussed in my previous post on eBay. I like to confirm my memories with reality checks when I can!

Still looking for the All Things Bright and Beautiful print above my bed. My secondary mother gave it to her brother when he adopted his son. Just another oddity of the puzzle. Perhaps I can find it on eBay or elsewhere on the net.

"All Things Bright and Beautiful"

The first two years of my life are a blank. And this would be the way most people's first two years are. The earliest conscious memory people have go back to as early as 2, though most people will say their earliest memory is later than that, around 3 or 4. My first conscious memory is Christmas when I was just shy of 2 1/2. But the blank part for me is a lack of photographs with the parents that raised me. The first photo I have ever seen with my secondary parents, I was almost 4. However, there are a couple of photos of me with my natural father and my "brother" and "sister" when I was a few months to about a year old. But not one photo has my secondary parents in it. And I never saw one of me as an infant with either parent. My baby book, in my secondary mother's handwriting, I just noticed is in pencil underneath the ink. She kept few records. But even my name is in pencil first. And it wasn't like she was using some fancy handwriting or even trying to be careful. It is her regular messy script in ink over the pencil. My first words are "B" (secondary father's first name) and "Lorna." What baby says Lorna!!!! The "L" sound is a very difficult linguistic sound to make - some languages don't even have the sound. So for Lorna to be my second word is just another lie. Mama is 8th on the list and Dada is not on the list at all. I would like to have the beginning years filled in for me. Where did I live and with who? I think it might have been with my natural father and the couple of photos with my siblings would just have been taken because they were visiting us. A few other clues. I did not give up my bottle until I was at least 3. And was told I would not take a bottle at all unless it was loaded with sugar. The consequence of that was that all my baby teeth rotted because they gave me the sugary bottle to go to sleep at night. I never thought much about these stories when I was a kid. No perspective. As a mother of two, with some experience and perspective, a child not taking a bottle seems to indicate a failure to thrive scenario. It is so curious to me how I never realized how these stories all fit together.

Realizing now how I was made to forget my first mother is really very hard. When I was crying and screaming in the shower with my memory of the reality of The Butcher Game, my anger and rage was for the little child that I was then. I just don't understand how a human being could put such fear into a little child to get love back. It is like that little child is someone different than me. I feel like I need to comfort that child. I feel like I'd like to stand up to Lorna for her. And that makes me realize that I am quite disconnected from myself.

I remembered something else that I had not thought about in years. When I was about 5 or 6, Lorna started buying this series of Bible Stories at the Acme grocery store. It was a series of about 8 books as I recall. If you bought so much in groceries then the book was free or very cheap. She also collected white dishes with a golden sheave of wheat on them this way! That just came back to me this minute! Or maybe those came in the Duz detergent! Wow, my memory really goes back sometimes. But she bought these books and told me that "Grandpa" made her promise to teach me about the Bible! Weird, since as far as I know he was a very lapsed Catholic! But maybe this was part of his deathbed wish when he made my father promise to take care of the baby. Maybe he got religious as he was dying and wanted to make sure I had some background. And I was baptized about a year after he died. Whatever, she began reading these Bible Story books to me at night before bed. And I remembered when I got it that Jesus had suffered. I remember thinking that I must be a very good and loved person because I was suffering like Jesus. Shit. That is so fucked up for a kid to think like that. But I did. And over the head of my bed was this beautiful framed print of animals in a forest I think, pairs of animals, maybe the ark was there. Around the edge was inscribed in gold leaf, "All things bright and beautiful, All creatures great and small, all things wise and wonderful, the Lord God made them all." And that was the last thing I said to myself before I went to sleep everynight. This was my own idea. Not Lorna's. After The Butcher Game was over. When I think back on this I can only love the little child I was for her strength to get through all the shit. And I can forgive her for the forgetting. I did what I had to do to survive in that family, with Lorna as my mother.

Lack of Insight and Energy

Reading back through my past posts I came to the realization that I rarely express my feelings. And I don't have much insight into myself. I am angry a lot. I am pretty pissed at the world on most days. It is as if I am still in some post traumatic stress mode of remembering, retelling, rethinking. This small insight into me might be a glimmer of hope that I could become human again. And as angry as others posts make me feel about adoption and its aftermath, I just have little energy to help or get involved on a political level. If I were to express one overwhelming feeling it would be worn down and out.

The Butcher Game - Intimidation Technique

I have not been writing lately, but doing a lot of thinking and remembering. Seeing the attachment therapy video a couple weeks ago put me on hold with writing. A lot of stuff came up from my childhood though and have been talking with my therapist about it. I never did Attachment Therapy (the Butcher Game was what my secondary mother did to get me to attach to her), it seems that is a new technique (and equally horrific), but watching the terror and abuse I began to go back. I got back to an upsetting (to say the least) memory of a "game" my secondary mother played with me when I was about 6 years old. My secondary mother should rot in hell for inflicting this on me. If such a place exists, she deserves to be there. Her name is Lorna and I don't give a flying fuck anymore if she or anyone else I know reads this and sees her name. I had already remembered I had a photo of my first mother in my drawer as a young child. It seemed I had to keep it hidden and not show anyone (though did show my best friend around 5 or 6). I remembered I would look at it before bedtime, tell her she was pretty and kiss it. Then hide it again. So one day my secondary mother caught me at it. During my EMDR therapy a few weeks ago I got into this memory of being caught looking at the picture. My legs were jumping uncontrollably and my neck hurt like hell during this session while I told him about this point where my secondary mother wanted me to say she was my Mommy. I remembered my secondary mother catching me looking at the picture and saying "But you call ME Mommy." She was jealous that I was looking at my first mother at bedtime. The realization that I had been pretty young when I gave my first mother up and had been pressurized to do so by my secondary mother and I hadn't had much choice at 6, was somewhat relieving - I had little choice at 6. And that was all I came up with in that session. It seemed to me it was at that point that I had denied or forgotten about my other mother for the most part. Though it did come up a few times after that (that I had another family), that was the moment when the decision was made to choose my secondary mother over my first or natural mother. The therapist told me to pay attention to the pain in my neck and I recounted that my neck and shoulders had always been areas I had carried my tension in.

A few days ago I decided to write to NJ to ask if there was a Judgement of Adoption for me. I had put this off since Christmas when I spoke with someone in the Surrogate's office and was told that NJ could give me my Judgement of Adoption if I requested it and sent all the information I knew of my two families and my birth certificate. It seems like this would not name my birth parents, but at least I would have concrete evidence of an adoption and when. So after writing a few versions of the letter, trying to whittle it down to essentials, this pain in my neck came back bad. I finally had the final version down and my neck was killing me to the point of taking a muscle relaxant to get to sleep.

Also, my 90 year old aunt, (well I guess she was really a sister-in-law as she was my other half-brother/uncle's widow), passed away last week. We had not been that close, mainly because she did not like visitors as she got old. But I would call her a few times a year to check up and run into her and her new (Married 38 years!) husband in the grocery store from time to time. She came into the family when I was about 7 and had 3 sons by her first two marriages, all the boys were older than me. Yes, the 38 year marriage was husband #4! Anyway, her sons all were here this weekend. I had not seen them for years, but had talked to two in the last few months. It was good to see them and we reminisced a bit about seeing each other as kids. I think perhaps being around these guys and thinking back to childhood opened that time up some more for me. They know of my past couple years search for my identity and they also came from an odd home situation with being placed in foster homes for a while, the youngest was adopted by my uncle/half-brother so, they have some perspective on all these strange familial relationships. Though they knew nothing of my birth situation. I know I am rambling a bit, because I just took a Xanax after taking a shower this morning and having this revelation as to why I have this neck pain when talking about my secondary mother finding me lookng at my first mother's picture as a child.

I had already remembered this game Lorna played with me called the Butcher Game and told my therapist about that. Now I remembered more and why she played the Butcher Game. I had forgotten her question and my response to her is what made the Butcher chop off more and more of me. As I remembered the reason and more about it, I screamed in the shower for like 20 minutes. This was "The Butcher Game", and the first time she did it was after she caught me looking at the picture of my natural mother (who died when I was a few weeks old). Then it became a bedtime ritual. You see a 6 year old needs the love of a mother and to love a mother. My bitch of a secondary mother would not let me love my first mother. To get Lorna's love I needed to deny my natural mother's existence, and then I would get a hug and kiss goodnight from Lorna the Butcher/Bitch. And that is what I got from the bitch at the end of the game when I told her she was my Mommy. I would be ready to go to sleep, in my pajamas, and she would say, "Am I your Mommy?" I would say "NO". At that point I knew who my mother was - it was the pretty lady in the picture in my drawer that I kissed at night. So then my secondary mother would say, "Then we'll have to play the Butcher Game. Here comes the ax to cut off your feet." And she would take her hand and do a karate chop, but not hard, to my feet. Then she would say "Am I your Mommy?" and I would say "NO" and she said "Then here comes the ax to cut off your knees. This went on up to my legs, my body, my arms, and each time she asked I said "NO" or "You're NOT my Mommy." It was terrifying. Then she would get to my neck (see this is where my neck pain comes in) and says then I'll have to cut off your head." And I would scream "NO. Don't cut off my head." She would say "But am I your Mommy." And I would say "No, Don't cut off my head" And she would say then I'll cut out your tongue. And she'd go to pull my tongue out and then I would say what she wanted to hear. "Yes you are my mommy". Because if she had cut off my tongue then I could never have called anyone Mommy again. So I saved my tongue and my head and the tradeoff was forgetting my natural mother. But I got a kiss and a hug from my secondary mother after I told her she was my Mommy. She is so sick. It has always been all about this bitch. Now the Xanax is really making me relaxed.

So I have to stop.

And all I could think of, after I quit the raging crys of "You fucking bitch" in the shower, was how glad I am to not see her and to have had the wisdom to keep her away from my children.

And to J.C.T.

Never forgotten.