Love it or Hate it.-Gert Mcqueen

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This post is very poignant. It also says a swear word or two. So prepare yourself to read that. This is by Gert McQueen. She is an Adoptive Mother. She Blogs HERE. Just wanted to warn some of you that this post may come off as blunt, but i love it and her bluntness! :)

Love it or hate it; adoption has a place in the world of humans!

Whether we want to accept it or not, all cultures, at all times, had ways in which they dealt with unwanted or orphaned children. Various methods have been used; exposure, abortion, slavery, prostitution, fostering, guardianship, and adoption, to mention a few.

It doesn’t matter if the methods were healthy, unhealthy, sane, insane, the bottom line is, all cultures and societies had/have ways to deal with children that have no family or that a family doesn’t want. Even in today’s so-called ‘enlightened’ state, there are many methods that are harmful, cruel and obscene. No one denies that! Human beings are notorious for doing the worst kind of harm/damage to their own kind in the animal kingdom. So that being said, it is also true, of the world that humans live in, is, that shit happens, whether it’s adoption or not.

Being adopted, via the acts of adoption, is not in and of itself, about anger; anger is a personal reaction to being adopted and the acts of adoption. Personally, I don’t have to be nice or tolerant, to and/or of, anyone, like any angry adoptee, who wants to beat me up, just because I am pro-adoption, am an adoptive mother and/or because I refuse to be bullied, slandered or vilified for my own experiences with adoption and with an angry adoptee, who, by an act of fate, is blood to me! Shit happens!

I am the oldest of five children. When our mother died, I was nine and the last child was 3 months, who was delivered by mother in her hospital bed. Our father knew his wife was dying before the last child was born. He searched for an option. His elderly parents were already caring for 2 of us and the other 2 were being cared for my mother’s relatives, with young children of their own. He also knew that there would be a fifth child! He proposed to an old friend, who had two children of her own. His proposition was; he’d help raise her two children if she would help raise his five. She agreed, but refused to raise the, yet unborn, infant. That is when he used the option of adoption, for the infant. In order for him to actually place his child into adoption, the child had to be ‘psychologically’ dead to him, in his mind. On the day his wife died, his last child also died…it is recorded in my mother’s Bible, in my father’s handwriting! Shit happens!

My first experience with adoption was the placement of my infant sister, whom I remembered. She was placed in a closed legal adoption, via friends of relatives, and so her ‘existence and whereabouts' was known to certain family members. The adoptive parents that adopted and raised my sister were older folks, childless for the woman was infertile. Within one year after the removal of my infant sister into adoption the rest of us children, my father’s 4 and 1 of my step-mother’s, were placed in various orphan and foster homes, due to illnesses of the step-mother. And so, the fragile home life/guardianship arrangement FAILED for all, except the child that was placed into adoption! Several of us did not return to our father’s care of years and those that were returned had to grow up pretty fast for there was no one that could care of us while our father was working. We all thought she, who was adopted out, got the better end of the deal that life dished out to us. When we knew that our sister was 18 we made contact. Reunion was not a good one; within a few short years major troubles occurred and things rapidly declined. Shit happens!

My next experience with adoption was with my children I birthed, a son and a daughter. My first marriage was not a good one and after the divorce the child support was always difficult to obtain. When my children were about 7 and 8, I became engaged. Within a year we were going to be married, he was going to adopt my children and we were going to have more children. The father of my children kept telling me to ‘hurry up and get those kids adopted, so I don’t have to pay child support’. Well, my fiancé couldn’t adopt my children, because he died! Our worlds collapsed! My children lost a second father. Shit happens!

My third and last experience with adoption was when a new man came to me and my children. He wanted children. I could no longer have children. So we decided to adopt, my children. By this time they were 15 and 16 and had to give their own permission to be adopted! My children wanted this ‘father’ but my daughter was in the middle of that ‘teen identity crisis’ and she decided not to go for adoption. That didn’t matter, for my second husband had already claimed both of them as his children in all ways that a parent does! And then shit happened!

My re-united sister, who was placed, out of the family via adoption, was a militant angry adoptee and she could not abide any adoption! She interfered in all my parental rights and authority When I told her to butt out, she retaliated by calling in a false child abuse report against myself and husband. The case was dismissed because we had just completed the rather intensive background investigations that happen when you adopt. At about the same time, we had just relocated to another city, for employment, and my daughter, in that teen-crisis, ran away. And a second false child abuse report was filed against me by this re-united sister. I still have the court’s decision…we were proved to have done EVERYTHING that was right and proper to protect our minor child. But the interference, the slander, the disruption to my children, to my marriage was devastating. My family unit was torn apart; because an adoptee was angry at the institution of adoption and took it out on me, my husband and children. Shit happens!

I severed all ties, actually divorced, the re-united sister. I attempted twice, for reconciliation with this sister, once after 10 years, then again after another 15 years, but was betrayed after each attempt. Shit happens!

Then the unthinkable shit happened! The reunited sister took everyone by surprise and wrote a libelous book against every member of both the birth and adopted families! That’s when we learned that she HATES adoption and us. Shit happens!

Well, her book is dead never to be reprinted. We sisters exposed her lies and deeds, against us personally and collectively as a family. Today we write to restore our family’s honor and good names.

Adoption is not a crime. Infertility is not a crime. Death of a parent and the need to care for minor children are not crimes. Step-parents adopting is not a crime. Children wanting and needing loving parents in a secure home is not a crime. If there is need for reforming the adoption laws, to include getting medical information, etc, than there are right and proper channels to do so. Browbeating, name-calling and other forms of hate activities are not right and proper and are crimes.

Does shit happen?? Of course!! Are children used and abused?? Of course!! But that is no reason to condemn and go after everyone who adopts a child! To do so, is a crime, and it just is not acceptable!

The only thing my children wanted was a family unit and a father…that’s why we adopted! That is not a crime.

The only thing my father wanted was for his wife NOT to have died! But she did and he had to do what he had to do! That is not a crime.

To dishonor one’s parents, by birth or by adoption, is a moral crime!

If someone is so angry over their life circumstances they need to really get a grip on reality because SHIT HAPPENS all the time. Adoption will never go away.

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