I read a comment this afternoon on www.cantkeepquiet.com post, on Who’s Your Daddy on that sickened me. THE COMMENT SICKENED ME, NOT THE POST, that I loved.
Sorry have the hyperlink on Blogger problem, and can’t get back into cantkeepquiet at all. Also probably have the Time Warner Cable-it’s-icy-so-we-can’t-function-problem, as I haven’t been able to get into many sites, and my computer was just fine-tuned and has been acting like new. Now back to the subject….
Wish that I could get into the comment and paste it as I can’t do it justice. Basically it said that Mulligan of Cantkeepquiet.com had prejudged as classless, a Fox show where a woman would pick her birth father out of eight possibilities.
The commenter, Matt T, (remember the name, I hope; won’t give him the satisfaction of a complete names and a Google entry) said that it was a very classy show where the woman not only met her birth father but three half-siblings (think there were more people) but had chosen to, and Mulligan should concentrate on more pressing matters like the Tsunami, the state of the world, world peace–you know all the important things.
A little lesson for Mr. T: Life, is made up of everyday happenings, and in times of tragedy, life goes on for the rest of us. We can feel the pain, we can give until it hurts, we can risk arrest for protesting the current administration, but we still live.
We still work, eat, sleep, get married, get divorced, have kids, lose people to natural death during disasters. In New York we learned that all the hard way.
Currently we are wondering why we even care about answering a comment by somebody who finds anything on Fox classy–except maybe The OC.
Because as an adoptee, I find it adoption “reunion” shows to be pandering, disturbing, unrealistic, insulting and the ultimate in classless behavior.
Occasionally I would tape an Oprah reunion show. They made me sick–especially when Oprah would smile at the camera and say, at the end, “not all reunions end like these.”
Nor should any sane adoptee, who had “decent” parents want them to. They’re feeding into a fantasy that should have ended somewhere in adolescence. I’m not a Cabbage Patch Doll.
Maybe I was lucky; my parents told me that I was adopted along with my name. They shared the story as they had been told it with my younger sister and me. They did leave out the illegitimate part until I was twelve and would have figured it out soon.
I was going to turn this into a homage to my mother, but that will be in her own post. My mother was my best friend; we could communicate without speaking. She had an uncanny ability to know what I was feeling before I even realized it. I left home at eighteen, but our friendship continued to blossom, and became one of equals. It’s been over three years, since she died, and I still go to call her when something, or nothing, happens.
My parents encouraged me to search for my birth mother so I always felt empowered, in many ways. They were my parents in every sense of the word.
I have nothing against meeting birth parents. I think it’s normal to be curious and it’s good to find out as much as I can about my DNA.
I’ve only had one set of real parents, and to meet a birth parent on TV, and “feel a sense of completion I’ve never felt before,” would be a lie. How could I meet people I feel no connection to on TV?
To make these meetings glamorous is cruel to all the people who were adopted from foreign countries and never can meet their birth parents.
It’s cruel to everyone who wants to meet their birth parents but won’t be able to for some reason or another.
It’s cruel to their families.
More than that it’s one of the most private of encounters.
Would you want to meet your parents on TV?
People talk about Extreme Makeover being cruel as the people have only two months to make a physical transformation.
Meeting a birth parent entails a psychic transformation.
It can be awkward, scary, and leave a person emptier than before she found her birth parent.
I know. Meeting my birth mother was one of the most traumatic experiences of my life. My birth mother is a good woman, but she’s my mother in DNA and birth only.
I always thought of my birth father as the sperm donor since she had told the agency very little about him, and what she told them turned out to be made up.
My birth mother can never take the place of my mother, and when we met she began to understand that I wasn’t looking for the original. If that sounds harsh it’s the truth. i have room for many friends but only one mother and one father.
I’m aware that many people don’t like their adoptive parents and/or have had horrible ones. Let me be harsh about this. How many “natural” children don’t like their parents and/or have horrid ones?
We don’t always get the parents we want or deserve. Nobody is more aware of that than an adoptee.
Adoptees are always aware that it’s the luck of the draw. We’re, all of us, randomly made. A random sperm meets a random egg–except in modern technology.
I was proud to be my parents daughter; but I knew adoptees who had parents I would want to ditch in a cabbage field.
I knew more adoptees who loved their parents. I went to a progressive sleep-away camp where there were more adoptees than usual. Or more kids who had been told that they were adopted.
I can’t imagine what it’s like to learn that you’re adopted from a cousin or a neighbor. It’s difficult for me to imagine parents being so insecure or suffering from other problems that keep them from telling their child. I consider it a form of child neglect.
But is any good served by meeting your parent(s) on TV? You become a public figure. What happens when the relationship goes south and the local newspaper decides to do a follow-up?
Do you refuse to do the interview, tell the truth or perpetuate another lie? I told my friends that I was adopted after we moved to a garden apartment development when i was four. They told their parents. Their parents called mine and asked if I was a chronic liar as I said that I was adopted but couldn’t be as I fit in my family too well.
My parents didn’t tell me this until I was an adult, but I sensed the undercurrents. Yet I remember how much their friends and family loved me. I was a welcome addition; not somebody who anybody ever thought of as being adopted.
Reunion shows deserve to be talked about.
Over 140,000 people died last week.
For the rest of us, life and all its little wonderful, horrible happenings go on.
Would anybody really want it any other way?
I’m an adoptee too, and found my birth mother at age 27. It has been cathartic. We have a relationship filled with its ups and downs. I have a lot of mixed feelings on the subject but you expressed a lot of them. Thank you.
I agree with not having the adoption reunions on tv. It is something that needs to be private. I found my birth mother when I was 18. Met her together with my real mom and then brought the whole family in. Unfortunately my brother (who is also adopted) did not have the same experience as his mother did not want to be contacted. I always feel bad about that.
My parents have always told us we were adopted (kind of hard not to as I definitely do not look like anyone in my family). My parents always knew the day would come when we would look for our birth family.
As it stands now, my birth mother does not speak to me but I have the most wonderful relationship with my young sister.