Oh Christian authors...you have no idea!!!

Completing the assigned reading for my master’s degree has been such an interesting exercise. 

 

Me multi-tasking. Nails and school reading.

As I read what these Christian authors write, I consider how interesting it would be to have a conversation with them, relating their writings to the adoption experience. That is the lens I see through, so I can't help but correlate what they are sharing with my own journey. My intuition tells me that if I brought up how their writings impact the adoptee they’d say something like, “Well, I believe what I wrote, but I believe there are exceptions…adoption being one.” I know we’re not supposed to assume or presume, but I can’t imagine most Christian authors believing their writings also pertain to the typical situations we adoptees face. 

Take this quote from Emotionally Healthy Spirituality (an amazing book!) by Peter Scazzero: 

“Family patterns from the past are played out in our present relationships without us necessarily being aware of it. Someone may look like an individual acting alone – but they are really players in a larger family system that may go back, as the Bible says, three to four generations. Unfortunately, it is not possible to erase the negative effects of our history. This family history lives inside all of us, especially in those who attempt to bury it. The price we pay for this flight is high. Only the truth sets us free.”[1]    

I believe this with all my being. If the author includes adoption and adoptees within this post, closed adoption and sealed records would not exist anymore in the world. 

---

[1] Peter Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2006), 74.

Reunited Korean American Transracial Adoptee Mila Konomos Shares Her Thoughts About Adoption, Christianity & More (Part 2 of 3)

Once again today we're talking to the ever insightful Mila Konomos! If you missed Part 1, be sure to catch up by reading here.

Deanna: What do you feel are the greatest misconceptions about adoption in general?

Mila: I think one of the most popular yet inaccurate views of adoption is that it is ultimately a good thing. There is a general perspective toward adoption that it is ultimately a noble and beautiful thing--when all is said and done, all the suffering, loss, pain, damage associated with adoption is ultimately mitigated by adoption. Adoption is still viewed as an overall gain in which the loss is cancelled out by the love--this is a harmful misconception that hurts everyone involved from the adoptee to the original parents to the adoptive parents, because it creates unrealistic expectations for everyone.

Another HUGE misconception that so many, especially Christians, REFUSE to dismantle is that adoption does not cause child abandonment/relinquishment, corruption, trafficking, and the like. Christians rarely acknowledge the demand and supply relationship that has been created by modern adoption philosophy and practices.

Christians revel in willful ignorance and choose to believe that adoption is “saving” children from orphanages and/or unloving, dangerous family situations. This is a terrible misconception--and this “head-in-the-sand” approach has provided the perfect substrate for pervasive corruption and abuse to flourish within the international adoption industry. And that’s another misconception--that adoption is not an industry. Oh, but it certainly is.

Reunited Korean American Transracial Adoptee Mila Konomos Shares Her Thoughts About Adoption, Christianity & More (Part 1 of 3)

This week I’m featuring a three part series by my friend and fellow Lost Daughters sister, Mila Konomos. It’s my joy to introduce her to you today, particularly those who may not know her, yet. She’s someone whose poignant posts and caring heart  compelled me from the get go. Her posts on the subject of adoption are among the most widely circulated in the adoption community, and for good reason. She always leaves the reader with so much to think about!

Before you read her three part interview this week I invite you to take a look at her reunion video. It's six minutes and thirty-three seconds of fascinating footage, which never fails to bring me to tears.

Deanna: Mila, although I've known you for a while as part of Lost Daughters, this is the first I'm introducing you here at Adoptee Restoration. Could you begin by giving us your adoptee story in a nutshell. (I know, I know, that's hard!)

Mila: It’s a pretty typical Korean adoptee story in some ways. I was born in Seoul, South Korea in 1975. Adopted by a White American couple as an infant. Began searching for my Korean family in 2002. Found them in 2009. My American parents are less than supportive but more than indifferent to my reunion. As far as being an adult adoptee, I live a good but complicated life in which I feel relentlessly divided. If folks want more details they can go to my retired blog, Yoon’s Blur or to Lost Daughters.

Rebellion, Backsliding, Demons or Post-Adoption Issues?

Controversy Alert!

I know I’m fixin’ to walk where angels fear to trod. Chuck Norris said he wouldn’t even go there. 

I ate my literary Wheaties this morning.  

Buckle up people, hold on to the bar. 

Just a word to any of you who may want to go off on a rabbit trails that are irrelevant to the post... 

Don't. This is an adoption blog. So what we talk about here is in the context of adoption. This is not the place to discuss Justin Beiber's retirement.

 

Photo Credit: purpleapple428, Flickr

Disclaimer for unbelievers:

Why do I share on Christian subjects when at least half of the readers here do not subscribe to any religion, many of them being atheists? Because part of the goal of this blog is expanding the Christian understanding of adoption. So please, unbelievers - have respect for the goal of today's post. 

And for the believers:

I’m a Christian and a pastor. But I am not here to argue theological issues.

I'm not that smart.

There are people (adoptees and nons alike) who e-mail  me as a result of reading this blog and  want to get into debates with me about the Trinity, eternal security, baptism, marriage, Pentecostalism, whether I baptize people in Jesus name or in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and much more. Go get some ice cream. Be happy. Live a little. Really, it's okay to breathe, my friend.

Let me say, I have my well- thought-out beliefs on all of those issues, but Adoptee Restoration is not the context in which I am going to debate it, publicly or privately.

Today's Topic As It Relates to Adoption:

In this post I’m going to discuss three things in relation to adoption:

1) Rebellion

2) Backsliding

3) Demons

No, I am not on drugs. Nor has someone hacked my blog.

I Would Love To Comment On Your Adoption Blog, But I Can't.

I hear this all the time.

The inbox is the most interesting.

It shows me how far we still have to go.

Consider these true stories. (All names omitted and a few minor details altered, to protect those who have reached out.)  
 
The Almost Adoption

There’s the pastor friend of mine who loves my blog because he was almost adopted. He has lived for a few decades of knowing what almost happened to him. He finds the blog fascinating because it gives him a window into what might have been.

His parents are church members who served in many ways in the church from the time they were just kids. Throughout the years they were choir members, Sunday School teachers, and whatever was needed in the church. They still serve today in many of the same roles. 

Back when they were barely out of their teens, and engaged -- his mom became pregnant and they thought their world had ended.  

Adoption: It's in the Bible!

I want my adoptee friends to know God’s love. 

I want them to see Him for who He really is.

Photo Credit: Ryk Neethling

I long for the whole world to know Him. If you are a Christian, I feel certain you join me in that desire.

Many adoptees have a hard time seeing who He is clearly because they keep hearing, “Adoptive parents pray for their children, and do what God did for us! Our adoptive parents pursued us, just like God pursued us and adopted us into His family!”   

When people share that what God does for us, by salvation, is the same thing as what adoptees receive from adoption as an institution -- created by man and regulated by the government --  many don’t want to say yes to God. 

They want to get as far away from God as possible.

Because if what God  can do for them is the same thing that a man-made government institution has provided, many of them think, “No thanks.”

How Pastors and Churches Can Help Adoptees

 There are between 6 and 7 million adult adoptees in America. 

Photo Credit: Lori Stalteri, Flickr

In my 26 years as a pastor, I have met many adoptees who would never darken the door of a church because they've receive hurtful and dismissive messages when they have dared to open up and share their feelings with spiritual leaders. 

 Adoptees who reach out to the Christian community may be hurt instead of helped if Christians do not come to understand the differences between a spiritual understanding of adoption (known as "salvation") and being an adoptee in a world where most people are not adopted.

When adoptees finally open up and share their pain, it wounds them all over again to hear from a Christian and especially from a trusted authority figure such as a pastor:

Things People Say to Adopted People

Being a pastor, I have a front row seat into people’s lives both good and bad. I rejoice with them in good times and weep with them in times of sorrow.

Photo Credit: ST33VO, Flickr

I’ve comforted a lot of people as they have received news of everything from a death in the family to a diagnosis of cancer. 

With all of these tragedies, I can safely tell you that I have never said things like:

Why It's Not Helpful To Tell Adoptees To Be Grateful They Weren't Aborted (Part Two)

This post is the second in the , Why It’s Never Helpful to Tell Adoptees to Be Grateful They Weren’t Aborted series.  

 After exploring this subject and bringing some enlightenment to those who had no clue of this fact, I’d now like to move on to bring some of my adoptee and first mother friends to talk about another related issue in response to this question. That is, the fact that adoption and abortion are not the same issue. After they share, I’ll wrap things up.

Deanna: Adoptee friends, why is it not helpful to tell  adoptees to just be grateful they weren't aborted?

“It is no more appropriate to tell an adoptee to be grateful they were not aborted than it would be to tell a non-adoptee that. ALL of our mothers made the same choice to give birth, whether they were married, single, rich, poor, young, old, whatever. Any of them could have aborted but did not. We need not be any more grateful for being alive than anyone else who is breathing. Adoption is not the opposite of abortion, giving birth is. The opposite of adoption is being raised within your own family.” 

 Julie J., Adoptee 

Why It's NOT Helpful to Tell Adoptees to Be Grateful They Weren't Aborted (Part One)

I asked some of my adoptee friends why it’s not helpful when people tell them to be grateful they weren't aborted. Yes, believe it or not, that's really common for adoptees to hear.    Today I’ve taken a sampling of their answers and am addressing just one reason why. Keep in mind, it’s not the only reason – just one that I will be addressing in this series.  

Once I share a few of their comments, I'm going to weigh in...

Deanna: Adoptee friends, why isn’t it helpful when people tell adoptees to be grateful they weren't aborted?

 “To be completely frank and politically incorrect, in the decades it has taken me to gain access to my siblings and birth family as well as deal with the circumstances into which I was relinquished, there have been many times I wished I were aborted. Those days have passed, but it is not lost on me that the quandry into which falsified birth certificates and denial of grief deliver a child, can result in a terrible waste of "life time." As for me, I'm pro "real life."  Clayton Shaw, Adoptee

Adoption Words Used in Church & Other Places (The Night I Ate the Whole Bag of Kisses)

Imagine my surprise when arriving at a pastors' wives retreat years ago to discover that the theme for the weekend was, “Relinquish.”

Photo Credit: Lisa Marie R, Flickr

The weekend had nothing to do with relinquishing babies. The retreat was about relinquishing hurt, pain, burdens, worries, etc. If I wasn’t adopted I would have thought this was a pretty cool theme. But I am adopted, and I’ll admit it got excruciating to sit there for three days hearing literally dozens, maybe even a hundred times that we needed to relinquish…relinquish...relinquish. "God is calling for total relinquishment, ladies!" we heard over and over during the weekend. I got so tired of hearing it, I left one of the sessions early, laid across my bed in the hotel and ate a bag of Hershey kisses they gave us when we checked in.

"Why Can't You Just Be Happy?" (Five Truths to Understand)

I have friends who fight human trafficking.

Friends who fight domestic violence.

Friends who fight racism.

Friends who fight world hunger.

Photo Credit: Lincoln Blues, Flickr

Everyone around them seems to think this is great. (Me included!) Nobody seems to ever ask these friends why they continue to care about these issues, or why they can’t just be happy.

This happens to me about adoptee issues, though. A family member recently remarked, "I just wish you could be happy..." Be careful, you might end up in my blog. This might be worse than gastritis, depending on the situation.

Adoptees Don't Need An Excuse to Search and Reunite

Two days ago, Craig* finally found His natural family members. I was so excited for him. It’s been such a long time coming for my friend. And now, he is officially on the reunion rollercoaster.

When he posted a status on Facebook that he had found family members, reactions didn’t surprise me at all, for I’m used to Adoptoworld by now. As used to one can get to people who have never experienced something telling other people what to do about it all the time.

In response to his excited announcement about finding his family, one non-adoptee admonished Craig that he "knew who the parents were that raised him, knew who he was in Christ,"  and therefore he is “leaps and bounds ahead of most of people.”

(Hold. Me. Back. Jesus. Yeah...I seriously had to physically restrain myself.  No worries, I was a good little well behaved adoptee.)

 

Why Celebrating Our Progress Is Essential As Adoptees

Years ago I lost about forty pounds and was looking and feeling great. Rocking a bikini at the beach and all that. Emphasis on was. (I'm back to addressing this post-adoption issue again...one of the most challenging that has yet to be overcome.)

Anyone who has ever lost weight doesn’t need to have it explained that it's some of the hardest work you’ll ever do. Back then, I wrote down every bite that went into my mouth and was on the elliptical machine, daily.

Imagine my frustration when quite a number of well- meaning Christian friends and acquaintances said: “Deanna…you look incredible! What an amazing miracle the Lord has done in your life…”

Photo Credit: Howard-f, FlickR

Okkkkkaaaaaaaaaaay. There were no miracles. And, it wasn’t the Lord’s butt on an elliptical machine everyday.

Do You Have Anything Positive To Say About Adoption?

Actually I do. 

A few months ago I shared Five Amazing Things About Being an Adoptee, just in case you missed it.  When I receive a question like, "Do you have anything positive to say about adoption?" I know the place it comes from.

I want to start by answering this question in one of my favorite ways…a true story.

Assumptions About Unwed Pregnant Girls

People sometimes try to debate me on adoption issues, emphasis on the word try and say things like:

Photo Credit: genue.luben, Flickr

It's so much better for unwed girls/women to relinquish their babies instead of keeping and raising them, because if the child is not adopted they:

[pick one]

• May be neglected
• May be abused
• May be mistreated/abused/killed by the mother's boyfriend

The Lack of Critical Thinking About Adoption (Especially Among Christians!)

Critical thinking: “Disciplined thinking that is clear, rational, open-minded, and informed by evidence: “The questions are intended to develop your critical thinking.”

 

Photo Credit: Sam Howzit, Creative Commons

Society is informed about adoption on a continual basis from the very beginning of their lives. Statistics show that 90% of the population is directly connected to adoption in some way. Messages  abound about adoption. (I challenge you to try to sit through even an hour of TV or a movie or read a book that doesn’t at least touch on the edges of adoption.) 

  

Significant Loss & Trauma Related to Adoption: Interview with Bonnie Martin, MEd, CACS, LCPC

Photo Credit: KetuGajjur, FlickR

When I started this blog, I expected to gather some adoptees together for healing, and hopefully educate some Christians in the process. I've been overwhelmed and humbled by unexpected responses. Many educators, social workers, licensed professional counselors and therapists (both Christians and non-Christians) have reached out to me to thank me for what I write here. 

Over and over I hear, "You're doing an important work here, Deanna. Please, don't stop." 

I believe adoptees are the experts on adoption because we are the ones who actually live it. But we're not alone in understanding the complicated realities of adoption.  Many experts possessing specialized education, professional experience and licensing also believe and declare what many of us adoptees know to be true.

 

I am going to feature them in a series of posts to come, entitled, "Ask a Therapist".  I'm incredibly excited to introduce the first therapist to be interviewed -- a personal friend of over 25 years. I admire her so much, for many reasons, one of which is the work she is doing all around the world in bringing hope and healing. 

  

Bonnie Martin, MEd, CACS, LCPC is a therapist specializing in psychotherapy for adults, young adults and adolescents. Her more extensive bio is featured at the end of this interview.

Dear Deanna: Can I Have Joy And Be Adopted?

I’ve received a lot of private letters from readers of this blog. Many of them are so thought provoking. Some issues I am admittedly not as well versed on, and  request insight from my friends in the adoptee community. I always respond and let people know I care even if it takes me a while to answer them all. I decided to start a new series here called “Dear Deanna.” From time to time I’m going to publish letters that come to me, with permission of the writers. Today's post is the first. All names and identifying info have been changed when requested. (The writer of today's letter preferred her real name be used.) Although the letters are addressed to me, I would very much like the community’s help in answering them. You may contribute your thoughts in the comments. I have invited the writers of the letters to also chime in on the comment stream anonymously or with their names -- however they feel comfortable.  Today's question is a spiritual one, from a fellow Christian-adoptee. Here we go...  

Photo Credit: LucastheExperience, Creative Commons

Adoptees: Why Can't You Just Be Okay With the Unknown?

"Your pressures are fine,"  the eye doctor said to me last Monday. "Things are looking good. Any history of glaucoma or high blood pressure on either side of your family?”

“None on my maternal side that I know of, no clue on the paternal side as I’m adopted and don't currently have information about my father's side,” I answered.

Photo Credit: FeatheredTar, Creative Commons