Falsified Documents

Potamus has been around for almost a year, and I have yet to send away for his birth certificate. I know that I need to, and the paperwork really isn’t THAT burdensome, but part of me feels so much hesitation to do it. In some ways I am scared to get a copy of his birth certificate and to see mine and Boof’s name on it, listed as mother & father. In even stranger ways, I’m worried that I will get a copy and NOT see our names listed on it.

My emotional reaction to something so simple as a birth certificate stems from my very own birth certificate. Because, my birth certificate is fake. Well, amended at least. For most people, their birth certificates are an accurate reflection of their birth story. There are lines for mother/father, time of birth, attending doctor, hospital the birth happened in, etc. But, for me,the birth certificate that I am allowed to have is not a historical document. It is a government falsified document that was created to reflect a storyline from years ago that perpetuate the idea of adoption being ‘as if born to’ the adoptive parents. So, instead of reflecting what actually happened (being delivered from Mama E’s body), it lists Mama L and Daddy B as my parents.

“But, they are your parents”, is an argument that I get from the general public. Yes, they are my parents. But they are my adoptive parents. They have adoption decree that is a legal piece of paperwork showing that they are my parents. Their names on my birth certificate is a government way of trying to change the storyline. My mom did not give birth to me, she is not even there in the hospital when I was born, so why is she listed as such? Has our country gone the ways of 1984 and begun to re-write history? Because, no matter how many times you write it, or the government writes it, my mother did not carry me in her body, nor did she expell me from her body in a birthing process. Maybe I “grew in her heart,” but this is a birth certificate we’re talking about.

But my historical record DOES exist.  The original one, with Mama E and Daddy J’s name on it. My birth name. The factual events of my birth story listed.

And I can’t order it.

I can’t see it, by government law. Even though I am an adult, I cannot order my own original birth certificate. Not even a copy, one that couldn’t be used for anything.

But you know who COULD order a copy of this historical document? Mama E or Daddy J. Even though I am an adult, I have to have my biological parents order my birth certificate for me.

In that way, I am still considered a child under the government’s laws, which is why I have been working to get the law changed. Because, when Potamus is grown, he will be able to order a copy of his birth certificate, so why can’t I?

Potamus, the day he we was born, from my body 🙂 (he looks huge, but he was only 7lbs!)

Biblical Adoptee Part Dos.

Jesus. We’ve all heard of him. And he is definitely used by the church and Christians as a promotion of infant adoption. Though, yet again, I fail to really understand how his story is like modern adoption. Let’s back up and look at his story:

Young, un-married mama Mary learns she’s pregnant from the Holy Spirit. Her fiance marries her anyway. Jesus is born and is raised by Mama Mary and Hubby Joseph. Sure, Jesus isn’t Joseph’s bio-kid, but he does a bang-up job raising him and Jesus went on to do some pretty cool things.

So…I guess I am confused….how is this an adoption story? I mean, Jesus was raised by his mom and not by genetic strangers. Joseph was a father figure, but yet Jesus still grew up knowing his other dad (the Big guy in the Sky), and spent many hours talking to him (praying).

If this was a modern story, it’d be that of a single mom raising her baby and being supported by a pretty cool dude, who loved the kid as his own, but still let the kid have a relationship with his bio-dad (which is kinda mind-bending to think about God having a bio-kid, but thats a dif entry).

So maybe Jesus could be considered a step-parent adoptee, but not necessarily a great example for adoption agencies for why we should adopt babies. In fact, it actually seems like another reason we should help families stay together, because God loved and provided great things for a young, in-wed, single mom.

Christianity and Adoption

The Bible talks about adoption, but does so from a VERY different cultural context than what we live in today.

For example:

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look
after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being
polluted by the world. -James 1:21

Wow, this verse is great! Instead of dogma, lets take care of people…women who’ve lost their husbands, children who don’t have parents. This is an idea that I can get behind! It is loving our neighbor in action.

However, how this verse, and verses like it are twisted is mind-boggling. Because taking care of widows (why isn’t there a huge push for THAT here, is it because people are obsessed with procuring babies?), and orphans (parentless children) in a biblical context would be about keeping those children in families and tribes of people where they would be raised to know their identity and have their needs met.

Caring for these orphans, did not mean shipping them off halfway around the world or the country to be raised by strangers.

A few years ago Madonna adopted internationally, from a country whose idea of orphanages were the same as boarding schools (but for the poor). This girl, Mercy, had family who was willing to take care of her but was TOO POOR to do so. They opposed the idea of her being taken from her homeland and raised without knowing who they are (a common adoption process, both domestic AND international). What was the cost of keeping Mercy with her family, going to school, through age 18? 5,000. Imagine, Madonna, with her millions, could have paid that amount A HUNDRED times over, and Mercy would have been able to grow up with her family. To me, keeping families together, was what this whole concept was about. And not domestic infant adoption like it is practiced today (a blog for another day, perhaps, but you would probably be SHOCKED to see the amount of money that changes hands in domestic infant adoption).

The verse, in my opinion, is the spirit of taking care of others, of family preservation. And while there are children who desperately need to be raised in a family, because their family cannot (for whatever the reason), our contemporary practice of adoption does NOT keep with that spirit.

Never take advantage of any widow or orphan. If you do and they cry out to me, you can be sure that I will hear their cry.

Exodus 22:22-23

National Adoption Awareness Month

It’s National Adoption Awareness Month, which is taken by many in the adoptee community, as a challenge to write every day about our experience as adoptees and our beliefs about adoption. While I can’t promise to blog every day, or blog everyday about adoption specifically, I am always an adoptee blogging. Adoption, the experience of being adopted, is who I am and clouds how I view and interact with the world. Some people try to boil my adoptedness down to the event, the legal action taken one day that made me my parent’s daughter, but being adopted is NOT just an event, it is a lifetime experience.

As a new parent, one of the things that is most often on my mind is how my son looks like me. Or how he looks like Boof. And the wondernment as he grows and changes. Because, I was 25 before I met someone who looked like me.

I was twenty five before I met someone who looked like me. And so I immediately began obsessing over features.

And here is a picture of my 1/2 sister, when I met her she was about 4 and the picture of me on the left is about 2.

Even though Potamus most often gets mistaken for a spittin’ image of Boof, he currently still has my blonde wispy curl hair and blue eyes. And there’s something about his eyes and nose shape that makes me think, in a few years, I’m going to be comparing his face a lot to my own childhood face. Even my parents say that he looks like me as a kid.

In college I used to get mistaken for a guy, and it used to bother me A LOT. But now, I can see perhaps that maybe they were seeing my father in me.

I am still trying to wrap my mind around genetics, and how little bits of me are now in my son, but it’s been helpful to be in reunion with my biological family, so that I can see a more linear progression of features.