If you stop thinking of it as a "RELINQUISHMENT, " wouldn't you feel better?
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If you stop thinking of it as a "RELINQUISHMENT, " wouldn't you feel better?
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That is such a negative term to use for what should be a beautiful piece of life.
You weren't rejected, you were welcomed. Maybe you had one of those AP that stupidly placed the importance on how they "rescued you" ( not true and lame). Then I can understand why you tend to look at it negatively. But think of how great it is that you have a family, no matter how flawed.
I come from a Cuban family backgroubd. We are in all shapes sizes and colors, No one talks much about how you look like a relative because genes are tricky and olive dark parents can have a pale child and two "white" parents can have a tanned child. Who knows. There is a lot more talk about how you "act just like Aunt Susan."
So why is it important to use the term "relinquishment?"
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PhilM
If your adoption is equivalent in your mind to a rape, you have more at issue than that you were adopted, buddy.
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wynn
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It doesn't matter what you call it. Whatever label you place on my daughter's father giving her and her brother up, it's not going to make it less painful for her. She was five and she remembers her father waking her up in the morning and telling her to get dressed, he was taking her away. She remembers being handed over in court, and the pain of screaming to her father to come back as he slipped out the door of the courtroom. She remembers her time in the orphanage and not knowing why she had to be there. Her mother had died a few months earlier, but she says her family weren't poor.
"You weren't rejected, you were welcomed." I never tell my daughter how she should feel. The poor girl has to deal with the loss of her mother, (seeming) rejection by her father, and adjusting to a new family and culture. She was telling me last night that I remind her of her mother, and that she's happy to be with us. But she also wishes she could understand why her father gave her up. When we've tried to communicate with her father through a go between all we get back are answers that my daughter scorns as not good enough. So she feels both rejected and welcomed, it doesn't have to be one or the other.
eta: my agency said that "relinquishment" was a hurtful term. We were to say that the children's families "made a plan for" them. Still means the same thing. |
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kateiskate
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It's people who think in the same way about adoption that you do that make a lot of us feel guilty for feeling pain about it. I refuse to go back to the way that I was before I admitted to having pain surrounding my relinquishment. I don't think of the word relinquishment as a negative term. No matter which way you try to spin it, it is a fact that I was relinquished.
No. I would not feel better at all. How do I know that? Because that's how I've lived most of my life so far. I've always not made much of an issue about my adoption and tried not to give it a lot of thought. I never once thought that any of my issues (social awkwardness, fear of abandonment) could be caused by my relinquishment. I never thought about the loss I had endured, instead focusing on all of the things my adopted family gave me and still wondering what was WRONG with me. I finally have come to learn that there isn't anything wrong with me. I am not afraid to admit to my loss because I know that it can't take away from my love for my adoptive family. I am dealing with it and moving on, picking up the pieces of who and what I thought I was and will never be. I am better now, than before because it is always better to live the truth rather than denial. Not admitting to the loss suffered from relinquishment was something awful I did to myself for 21 years.
And yeah, I was welcomed into my family. They love me as their daughter because that's what I am. But no matter HOW MUCH THEY LOVE ME or how much I love them, it will NEVER erase the fact that I was relinquished. I learned that you can spend a lifetime trying to erase that fact, but your life won't change until you open your eyes, admit it and start to heal. |
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magic pointe shoes
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Wow, I really expected this question to be directed at parents who have relinquished and not to adoptees! I can't tell you how many times people suggest that I'm crying in my corn flakes because I'm not thinking of what a wonderful noble loving deed I did. |
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Linny G
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Why should we? We were. We were also "surrendered", "given up". We were NOT, however, "chosen".
Maybe your Cuban family did not talk about how much you did or did not look like your family, but mine did. I was a pasty faced tall white girl with red hair, adopted into dark and short Italians. It was talked about all the time. I did not look OR act like them.
I will NEVER go back in time and lie about my story. I WAS relinquished. Yes, it was a beautiful thing for my a p's, but a horrible thing for my N Mom. It is what it is. |
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Anha S
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Standing ovation for Phil!!
I'm tired of people trying to pretty this mess up. Its not pretty. You can put a pig in a dress, its still a pig. |
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Sly
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I am a mother who relinquished her son. I surrendered to forces greater than my own will, and under extreme pressure acquiesced. Why should I soft soap or soft peddle my experience to make someone else feel better? Why does the truth of someone's experience make you uncomfortable? Why should anyone change their terminology so that someone who is not affected by adoption not feel squeamish about the truth?
My experience was during the EMS/BSE. During that time period, the terminology was more accurate and more truthful. There wasn't the push to softsoap the legal language. Political correctness had not been created yet. We called it Relinquishment, Surrender because that is what the papers were called. Our part in the process ended with the Relinquishment. We didn't choose; our 'choices' were a given and it was as if engraved in bronze. We Surrenderd. We Relinquished. We Gave In and Gave Up. Please don't try to make it something that it isn't. |
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Lillie
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OMG now I've seen it all.
Being given away from my family was a beautiful thing? Ok let's just call it what it is...ABANDONMENT.
I need a drink. |
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Mei-Ling
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Nope. Not at all.
Lessee. I'll just paste one of my blog entries instead of repeating myself like an old tape:
"Use whatever terms you like. Call it “left to be found.” Call it “left out of love.” Call it a “sacrifice.” Call it “done because of love.” Call it “done IN love.”
At the end of the day, it is still done. Doesn’t matter which terms are used to soften it, to pretty it up. It still happened. It still feels very much like abandonment. We know it was. Hell, some of us have even had the “opportunity” of seeing the papers where our original parents’ names are striked through (or erased), and seeing our adoptive parents’ names take those spots instead.
So maybe she did do it so her baby could be found. Maybe she did “leave out of love.” Maybe she did “sacrifice” her heart and soul and had it ripped into shreds once she walked away from her infant. Maybe she did do it “out of love.” Maybe she did do it ”in love.”
At the end of the day, guess what? It’s still abandonment. The baby is still abandoned and feels it."
[You weren't rejected, you were welcomed.]
By the original family? It FEELS like rejection. You cannot dictate or control how someone FEELS about that. You just can't.
Welcomed into my adoptive family? For frick's sakes, I hope so, because this is for life.
[Maybe you had one of those AP that stupidly placed the importance on how they "rescued you" ( not true and lame)]
No.
[But think of how great it is that you have a family, no matter how flawed.]
Yes. That's it. How stupid am I for even considering I had an original family who LOVED ME FIRST. Damn me, eh, for thinking that way?
[So why is it important to use the term "relinquishment?"]
Because that's what it IS. No amount of changing the term or "prettying" it up is going to erase what happened. |
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Felicita1
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"You weren't rejected, you were welcomed"
Okay, Dar-D, so you are saying that adoptees popped into existence out of thin air to be adopted. Or were found in the cabbage patch?
So, they weren't rejected, abandoned, surrendered, or otherwise separated from their original families in order to be "welcomed" as you say?
I certainly welcomed my son into the world. And if there had not been an industry busy selling babies and paying hospital staff to remove them at birth from perfectly fit mothers just because that mother was unwed, then he would not have been "welcomed" by a substitute family.
Adoptees suffer a loss to begin with. They have a history before adoption and for every family "built" by adoption, another one must be shattered first. Relinquished? That's a polite term for it. Many mothers say "surrendered" or "gave up" because they had no hope of keeping their babies and were finally beaten by the industry. Many adoptees say abandoned or given away because that's how it feels: to be abandoned, rejected, or discarded. To deny their reality is to minimize/discount/ignore their truth and this is insulting. |
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Flying Monkey #073177
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I propose we call it like it is.
I wasn't relinquished, I was ripped out of my loving mother's arms to fill the barren arms of someone desperate to parent.
Is that better for you? |
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myst1998
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Wow, you are a seriously damaged person. What is it are you so angry about? Were you abandoned and have no access to your records? Or were you given up freely and are angry with your parents for RELINQUISHING you? Your questions are very angry, bitter and sad... I feel sorry that your life is so sad but those here are not to blame for that. I suggest you look into therapy. |
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Gaia Raain II
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If you stop thinking of it as cutting off your leg, would it hurt less? I mean, you could use the term, "replaced with a wooden appendage", and that would make it all better, right?
ETA: Oh no, my issues have nothing to do with agencies allowing sickos to adopt. My issues have to do with having been abused in every imaginable way as a child, and finally waking up 11 years ago to break the cycle and speak out. I'm well aware that I'm "broken", and am truly grateful that I've finally found my voice. Now that I've found it, I like the fact that I can use it not only for myself, but for others as well. MY issues have nothing to do with adoption at all. |
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PhilM
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Words matter.
Why don't we call "rape" something positive? Because it's not.
Why don't we call "murder" something positive? Because it's not.
Why don't we call "adultery" something positive? Because it's not.
Why don't we call "relinquishment" something like "welcomed"? Because it's not.
You can't make the loss go away simply by refusing to talk about it. That's THE MISTAKE many APs make. (To answer your earlier question about what APs should do differently.) |
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aloha.girl59
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"You weren't rejected, you were welcomed."
Oh, come on! Even YOU must realize that in order for a child to be adopted (ie "welcomed"), he or she must first be rejected/given up/taken from/relinquished!
Adoptees lose a family in order to gain another one. This isn't about choosing one family over another; it's about acknowledging that loss and grieving for it. I can't even imagine how that would feel, but I try to because I have a son whom I adopted. I want to be able to understand his hurts and let him know he always has me for support...no matter what. |
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Serenity71
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Relinquishment, surrender,give up... its all semantics. It means the same thing. Its the term DOCS uses, at the end of the day they have use some kind of word to describe what happens they just chose that one... |
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MamaKate
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I agree with almost everyone here. Softer sounding words do not diminish the act or the consequences. George Carlin had a great bit about softening language it went like this:
"I don't like words that hide the truth. I don't like words that conceal reality. I don't like euphemisms, or euphemistic language. And American English is loaded with euphemisms. Cause Americans have a lot of trouble dealing with reality. Americans have trouble facing the truth, so they invent the kind of a soft language to protect themselves from it, and it gets worse with every generation. For some reason, it just keeps getting worse. I'll give you an example of that. There's a condition in combat. Most people know about it. It's when a fighting person's nervous system has been stressed to it's absolute peak and maximum. Can't take anymore input. The nervous system has either (click) snapped or is about to snap. In the first world war, that condition was called shell shock. Simple, honest, direct language. Two syllables, shell shock. Almost sounds like the guns themselves. That was seventy years ago. Then a whole generation went by and the second world war came along and very same combat condition was called battle fatigue. Four syllables now. Takes a little longer to say. Doesn't seem to hurt as much. Fatigue is a nicer word than shock. Shell shock! Battle fatigue. Then we had the war in Korea, 1950. Madison avenue was riding high by that time, and the very same combat condition was called operational exhaustion. Hey, were up to eight syllables now! And the humanity has been squeezed completely out of the phrase. It's totally sterile now. Operational exhaustion. Sounds like something that might happen to your car. Then of course, came the war in Viet Nam, which has only been over for about sixteen or seventeen years, and thanks to the lies and deceits surrounding that war, I guess it's no surprise that the very same condition was called post-traumatic stress disorder. Still eight syllables, but we've added a hyphen! And the pain is completely buried under jargon. Post-traumatic stress disorder. I'll bet you if we'd of still been calling it shell shock, some of those Viet Nam veterans might have gotten the attention they needed at the time. I'll betcha. I'll betcha. "
http://www.iceboxman.com/carlin/pael.php
You can call it what you want - the effect is the same and until we address the cause rather than the symptoms, people will continue to suffer. Maybe if we used harsher and more honest language, we would see more progress towards actual reform in the world of adoption. |
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Carol c
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Why does it bother you that so many of us use the word "relinquishment"? For me, that means that I was coerced and forced to sign adoption papers against my will. In fact, I never even really signed adoption papers in my mind - I was lied to in the recovery room and told I was merely signing a release to take my baby and myself back to the Booth Home.
The reality sure seems to be that most mothers who lost a child to adoption were given no other options or offered any kind of support. Why pretend that it wasn't gut-wrenching when it was? It seems that you are suggesting that if we call it by a different name, it won't hurt so much that we lost out on the chance to raise a child we wanted to keep. That's not honest or healthy.
The truth is the truth. |
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Temperance
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The term "relinquishment" is the correct term. If you have read The Giver by Lois Lowry, perhaps you would comprehend the importance of precision of language.
-Tempe |
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Meg
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There are so many different reasons for adoption that many have the mindset of "I rescued you" etched in their brains. Also some AP's don't want to share their adopted child with the childs birth parents so they make it seem to the child that the birth mom really didn't want them and if it weren't for them ,the AP, than they would have been living in a foster home most of their life which scares them out of meeting their birth parents which I agree is stupid beyond all belief.
Now there are those rare cases where AP really did rescue the child but they shouldn't say that all adoptions are like that because as you said what really matters is that they have a loving family, blood or not. And in some cases they have two families blood and not blood, who love them very much. Relinquishment is a stupid term. More like providing you with the best quality of life possible is better. |
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snowwillow20
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I hate that word "reliquished". That is the word that the adoption agency "The Children's Home Society" used instead of giving up your child in hopes that, that term would make it all better, no you didn't give her away, you reliquished her.
To me that term is more derogtory than birthmom.
You are right about blended family's, my son has married into a very blended family, mexican, philipino and black. We are white, my granddaughter is simply beautiful. |
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Not my fault either
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It doesn't matter what you call it. You may as well just call it feeling sorry for ourselves because thats the outcome. |
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