In today’s times, it’s easy to see that society has lost its way, so what do we have to do to find our way, not back, but to rise to the occasion and nurture a better future for all?
Ironically C-Ptsd is on the increase throughout this pandemic, the focus on mental health has improved, however, the irony lies in the small time frame in which people have been affected in comparison to those who have been facing their trauma since birth.
We need to listen. To listen to those who have been affected in the highest degree and the deepest of ways. How? Well as an adoptee I can tell you is most definitely not through epistemology – the theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity, and scope, and the distinction between justified belief and opinion.
In 1689 John Locke penned an essay by the title – Essay Concerning Human Understanding – The essay is an attempt inquiry “into the original, certainty, and extent of human knowledge, together with the grounds and degrees of belief, opinion, and assent”. where he describes the mind at birth as a blank slate. Modern science has more than enough evidence to prove this wrong. Along with the many voices of the Adoptee Community (join here). It’s practically the worst thing someone can say to an adoptee. I can honestly say that hand on heart, this community is the most internationally connected in terms of social media advocacy, yet we are one of the most disenfranchised which is the start of another article altogether.
A Bit of Clarity
Adoption – The legal act of permanently placing a child with non-biological (adoptive) parents other than the biological (natural) parents. Not to be confused with Adoption (theology) – Admission of believers into the family of God,
The interference of religion and its complete misguided approach is how adoption has transmuted into one of the repulsive social experiences to date. (insert a completely new article here).
Finding A Way Through Reasoning?
Terence McKenna – The history of Reason and intuition.
Reason – which is always held up as the path to true understanding has two forms, they are called deduction and induction. All forms of reason can be subsumed under these two types.
Deduction – which is considered the stronger form of reason is called reasoning from first principles. This starts from an idea that cannot be proven, you accept it as given and you reason outward from it. You start with what appears to be an incontrovertible truth or what we agree appears to be an incontrovertible truth. You test the truth of it by carrying out this imaginary inspection of the items involved and verifying that the statement appears true in all cases that you can imagine.
Principles that are reasoned from deduction, rest on evidence to make its appeal to reason. No one has ever figured out how to prove this. When you move from the realm of axioms to the realm of theological first principles the appeal then is not the obviousness of it but to the desirability of it. We hope these things are true, but they are certainly not self-evident in the scheme of things, from the point of view of most of us, so what this shows is that in the matter of deeper things, deductive reasoning rests only on the appeal that hope can lend to its case.
Induction – for those who believe in it, is thought to be without doubt a superior form of reasoning to a deduction because it leads to control and manipulation of real consequences. What is interesting about this in contrast to deduction is that there is no untested first principle, you don’t state something and then reason from it. You make repetitious observations and then those observations which are most repetitious you raise to the status of laws.
Out of inductive reasoning comes the structure of modern science. There’s a funny thing about induction, it makes an unstated assumption about time, it’s making the assumption that time is invariant because what is it is saying is if (A) precedes (B) in a thousand cases, then it is likely that (A) will precede (B) in the thousand and first case. It’s a probabilistic theory, it assumes that probabilistic laws give momentum, to repetitious observation.
The most interesting cases are the cases that lie in the realm of primary experience, of being the felt experience of being. In that realm the realm of love affairs divorces lawsuits religious-political upheavals among others, induction is no good guide at all.
One love affair does not explain another, one marriage does not illuminate another, one revolution really does not shed light on another. There may be generalizations but when you live through these things what you take from them is the uniqueness of the experience.
Where Does it Leave Us?
It leaves adoptees out in the cold. We have so-called experts writing legislation and laws that are blatantly in breach of the Un’s Convention on the Rights of a Child. There are out-of-touch cultural beliefs embedded in society that have been influenced and perpetuated by religious organizations. These organizations are directly benefiting financially from implementing suffering onto children and infants in the form of biological separation and in turn, are supported by financial grants from said governance. C-Ptsd is most definitely guaranteed at birth following such an engrained evasive experience.
Adoption instigates separation at a cellular level, yet prospective and current adoptive families unintentionally or in some cases purposefully choose to ignore key markers and evidence of trauma. Worse adoptees are told to be grateful. All the while I’ve seen and personally experienced the most hideous scenarios that have been a result of adoptive families hiding their truth in an attempt to avoid dealing with and resolving other key issues such as infertility, the shame of having a child out of wedlock, narcissistic traits surface in the form of the need of control or the need to feel altruistic social approval by being seen as a savior.
In truth, there is an unbalanced component in adoption that systematically ignores the reality of adoption. Just look at the sheer volume and tone of the pro-adoption narrative. This narrative wholeheartedly supports Cultural appropriation – this is the unacknowledged or inappropriate adoption of an element or elements of one culture or identity by members of another culture or identity. With each layer of gaslit denial, adoptees have been slowly separated from their truth time and time again. Until something changes in society’s ability to acknowledge the truth behind adoption, adoptees are doomed to a life of disenfranchised C-Ptsd.
Adopters, its Time We Took Our Power Back
Possibly then we can reverse the feelings of imposed social inadequacy. Adoptees need to be in positions of leadership to influence real meaningful change not only in their own lives but also in the lives of those who falsely think that adoption will improve their lives by ignoring their own issues.
When society can support children to prosper through biological connection, rather than separation, there will be a unique observable shift in social consciousness
Again I’d like you to join the Adoptee Community here, this is a discussion group for all members of the triad. This includes expectant/birth parents, hopeful adoptive parents/adoptive parents, and adoptees. We encourage education and ethical adoption practices.
With your help, perhaps adoptees can start to heal one cell at a time by fostering an attitude of Cellular upregulation – The process of increasing the response to a stimulus specifically: increase in the cellular response to a molecular stimulus due to an increase in the number of receptors on the cell surface. Help us rewire our internal struggle and reclaim our reality.
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Husband, Father, Son, Brother, Adoptee, Friend, Colleague, Mentor, Former Lecturer, Multimedia & Web Designer, Artist, Former Art Director, Human Rights Activist. Dedicated to lifting standards of ethics & morality by promoting truth and denouncing the Conservancy of inhumane ideologies.
Throughout my personal life and career, I have created, fostered and maintained strong meaningful relationships. Including Former students and fellow adoptees.
I’m a qualified multimedia lecturer with over 20 years of experience with a vision for colour therapy, energy healing and natural therapies. Facilitating intuition, idea generation via a range of creative conceptualisation, and brainstorming techniques to ensure strong and effective solutions.
I’m currently a committee member of Adoptee Rights Australia inc. which has established itself as the peak body to advocate for reform in adoption legislation, policy and services in all Government jurisdictions in Australia because the human rights and well-being of adopted persons should be restored, protected and promoted. Most importantly Adoptee Rights Australia seeks to raise public awareness of, and support for, reform of adoption legislation, policy, and services across Australia.
After all…
“We’re all just walking each other home.” – Ram Dass
I wonder how many instances there are wherein immense long-term suffering by children of dysfunctional rearing might have been prevented had the parent(s) received some crucial child-development science instruction by way of mandatory high school curriculum. I believe that greater factual knowledge of what exactly entails bringing a fully sentient child/consciousness into this messed-up world — therefore the immense importance and often overwhelming responsibility of proper rearing — would likely make a student less likely to procreate.
Along with their physical wellbeing, children’s sound psychological health should be the most significant aspect of a parent’s (or caregiver’s) responsibility. Perhaps foremost to consider is that during their first three to six years of life (depending on which expert one asks) children have particularly malleable minds, like a dry sponge squeezed and released under water, thus they’re exceptionally vulnerable to whatever rearing environment in which they happened to have been placed by fate.
If society is to avoid the most dreaded, invasive and reactive means of intervention — that of governmental forced removal of children from dysfunctional/abusive home environments — maybe we then should be willing to try an unconventional proactive means of preventing some future dysfunctional/abusive family situations: Educate all young people for the most important job ever, even those who at the time plan to always remain childless. The wellbeing of all children — and not just what other parents’ children might/will cost us as future criminals or costly cases of government care, etcetera — needs to be of importance to us all, regardless of how well our own developing children are doing.
A mentally sound future should be every child’s fundamental right (up there with air/water/food), especially considering the very troubled world into which they never asked to enter. Regardless, consequential dysfunctional parenting occurs considerably more often than what is officially known/acknowledged. To quote Dr. Alvin F. Poussaint (Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School): “This is the most important job we have to do as humans and as citizens … If we offer classes in auto mechanics and civics, why not parenting? A lot of what happens to children that’s bad derives from ignorance … Parents go by folklore, or by what they’ve heard, or by their instincts, all of which can be very wrong.”
I have often thought of the issues outlined in Frank’s post: educate parents-to-be on what parenting actually requires. Tending to feedings and changing diapers are not even the basics. Perhaps OBGYN practices and hospitals should be augmented with mandatory – yes, mandatory – training to ensure that every parent is at least exposed to the emotional and physical needs of children through the developing years. Such information should also be readily available on .gov websites for easy and consistent access to all.
It’s astonishing how much we as a society are willing to spend on recovery programs, therapy sessions, not to mention mental health pharmaceuticals. And yet not willing to dig for, name and work on addressing root causes.
We as a society seem to be more inclined to come to the rescue with band aid social programs or direct philanthropy to such causes rather than direct funds to new policies and how to giving all our children a truly fair shot at being who they are.
In hindsight I could have used such education myself. Now my failures surface every so often in well articulated conversations with my young adult child.
While I appreciate your comment and what it does to try and provide an educational-based solution to the separation of children from their blood, I feel that it fails to take note of the realities of adoption in the United States. The majority of birth mothers (first families) that relinquish their children are not doing so out of a lack of knowledge or understanding of raising kids. I would argue it is the exact opposite. These mothers are putting their children up for adoption because they know EXACTLY how much it takes to properly raise a child.
The reality is that the majority of these adoptions are simply families that do not have the financial means to support their own children. That’s where the solution lies. Make sure families have what they need to support their own children–keeping families together and removing the cause of so much childhood trauma leading to CPTSD and other mental health issues in adoptees. As an adoptee, I know just how much damage was done to me by being separated from my mother only hours after birth. How can we still be so naive to believe that giving (mostly Black and brown) children to other (mostly white) families is an ethical solution?
Shane hit the nail on the head. There exists a demand for children–via infertility, savior mindsets, the belief that people deserve to be parents, and a supply–young mothers/families with no money to feed their children, and no feasible access to reproductive health care.
Adopted out during the era of Irish forced adoption of babies born to unwed mothers.
Adopted into a family of ‘well intended’ parents who provide care and love however it was very evident to me that I was ‘not the same’ and I lived with the secret internal turmoil that I was ‘wrong’
Never able to bond with the siblings. Not truly acceptable to the father and a mother who desperately tried to mould me to the desired model they expected.
Overall the result was deep distress and a disabled bonding ability and attachment issues that continue to this day.
Add to that a culled connection with the birth mother! (met her in my 20’s)
It is a very lonely life with full of complexed internal struggle of self loathing and self blame.
Family…..? What is it even