#adoptees unite

[babe-con-el-poder]

I'm adding excerpts from a story in today's NY Times because they trigger a flush of memories that I think speak to the core of transracial adoption and the perspective it creates. A perspective that I think only kidnapped hostages might relate to.

I remember 1998ish after my high school days when I met up with some friends of friends at a random garage party. I was the only one who wasn't white because I was only ever surrounded by white people my entire childhood. I'm not white though. I was always in danger of racism but in a particularly horrific way where it is not blatant. More of a gimmick or fetish. On this one evening I was surrounded by mostly young white men who liked rock music and beer. One of them was someone I recognized as actually a sweet boy from a few years back. As he talked to me and we laughed about school days he proudly showed off his new tattoos. Tattoos of large Nazi Swastikas. I was horrified. But I knew the unspoken game I was supposed to play...having been adopted into a white world...I wasn't a "real" threat as a brown person. I wasn't like "those trashy N-words". So I was safe. I could laugh at his stupidity if I wanted to and he would laugh in agreement that his tattoos were just meant to be a joke. A ploy for attention more than...being a Nazi sympathizer.

He flirted with me and asked me to sit on his lap while we chatted and drank. And as I did, my heart broke for him. And my mind downplayed my own fear of his probable violence. I was being brainwashed into white supremacy, so that I would remain safe. I put his comfort first and foremost above my own discomfort so much so that I actually felt empathy for him. But now I realize that I was heartbroken because this moment just proved all my fears were valid. That the mistrust of the all white environment I grew up in was legitimate. Again I was feeling the free fall of abandonment.

And I've seen this repeated by white supremacy over and over....the use of coercion and twisted humor to cover up the insanity of bigotry.

This NY TIMES story occurred decades after that crazy night in the garage. Kids are still dealing with the same problem. No matter how liberal or educated or wealthy a town and community wants to be in this country....there is a sickness that runs though our United States culture.

As long as it keeps being ignored and laughed off it will continue to thrive.

[tonechkag]

Borrowed from FerraSwan over on IG

[brithombar]

i think that dc creating wfa to tedt the waters with the idea of fandom support for bruce living with his kids and then going forward with a plotline where bruce finally lives with kids as the primary caretaker but it is only his biological son he lives with is like the stupidest decision they could possibly make

[omgthatdress]

Oh, look, another blonde hair, blue eyed doll from AG. I watched the cute little stop-motion short film AG made for Courtney, and I have to admit, it was fucking cute and her charm won me over.

There’s *some* actual historical engagement with the popularization of video games. The biggest thing is that her mom is running for mayor of their fictional town in California (because of course Courtney has to be a Valley Girl) and faces a bunch of sexist BS on a TV interview. It covers the space shuttle era of space travel, Challenger disaster and the emotional impact that had on the United States.

In her second book, Courtney has a classmate with AIDS. I’m glad that was included, because putting AIDS and HIV-positive kids in schools was a huge fight in the 80s. Here in Tampa, the mother of Eliana Martinez, a disabled girl who had contracted HIV in a blood transfusion at birth, went to court to get her daughter into school, and a federal judge ruled she could go to school as long as she spent the day in a glass cage like an animal. It was that bad. Eventually, Eliana was able to attend school without the cage because her mother, Rosa, was amazing.

In spite of everything I like about Courtney’s story, let’s be real. AG’s 80s doll should have been Latina. A Cuban-American girl living in Miami, with at least one parent who’s an Operacíon Pedro Pan adoptee, and with relatives who came over during the Mariel Boatlift. And I’m not just saying that because my parents were living in Miami in the 80s, I’m saying it because Miami was an incredible place in the 80s.

Operacíon Pedro Pan was a program by the U.S. State Department and Catholic Church for Cuban children to be sent to America when parents feared they would lose their parental rights and their children would be sent to communist indoctrination camps. It was a chance for their kids to be raised as Catholic in free America instead of atheists under the brutal Castro regime. About 14,000 children were removed from Cuba to be mostly re-settled in Miami.

You may be familiar with the Mariel Boatlift if you’ve seen the opening scene of Scarface, which actually sums up the situation pretty well.

Now, granted, Mariel only happened between April and October of 1980. Even after the boatlift officially ended, people seeking to flee Cuba continued to come on boats. The “wet foot, dry foot” policy meant that anyone fleeing Cuba who managed to set foot on American soil was guaranteed asylum. However, they had to face the US coastguard trying to intercept them and turn them back on the water. Refugees from Haiti fleeing the Duvalier regime also flocked to Miami, but since Duvalier was right-wing, Haitians weren’t granted the same protections as Cubans were and it was absolute bullshit.

On top of all that, Miami also had thriving African-American, Afro-Caribbean, Colombian, Jewish, and gay communities. There was just SO MUCH incredible stuff going on in Miami in the 80s, and I mean, hello, Miami Vice was a whole aesthetic!

You could include all the stuff that’s going in in Courtney’s books and STILL pack in so much more amazing history. The overall vibe I get with Coutney’s collection is that even though there’s some good stuff in her stories, it’s more about selling 80s nostalgia than actually teaching 80s history, which is a travesty. I know it’d be hard to engage with 80s politics and Ronald Reagan without pissing off a *lot* of people, but you can still engage with some serious 80s history if you just look outside of the blonde hair, blue eye box.

[lavenderek]

man, i am up to here with bullshit myths about adoption.

less than 2% of adopted children develop a trauma disorder like reactive attachment disorder.

70% of adoptees express an interest in learning about their biological families. facebook is cool.

2.5% of minor children in the united states are adopted.

0% of adoptees have exactly the same experience and perspective as another adoptee.

"well, i know several people who were adopted and then they went insane and hated their adopted families."

okay, first of all, no you don't, you made it up; second of all, that is bonkers and not at all representative of average life, and i think you know that; and third of all, were you there to see what these people's experience was growing up? maybe their adopted families actually treated them like shit. who's to say? neither of us was there because you invented them to win an argument.

"adopted kids will always feel different from the other siblings."

do you treat them differently from the other siblings? try not doing that. maybe then they won't.

adoptees who are a different race from their families have a different experience. therapy can help them process this, and they can also look on adoption forums and subreddits to connect with other interracial adoptees to find support and validation.

but either way, consider treating your son like your son.

"you shouldn't tell a kid they were adopted until they're old enough."

old enough for what? when do you think it's a good time to tell a kid they weren't adopted?

"but they might not be ready."

ready for what?

if you lived your whole life chill and normal, and then one day your parents sat you down and said you were adopted, it could change your perspective of yourself and where you fit into the family. you might be angry and sad that you were lied to, and you might wonder if it was kept a secret because it's shameful, because they didn't want you the way you were.

if you knew your whole life you were adopted, then you'd know your whole life you were adopted.

"how do you explain that to a toddler?! you should wait because they won't understand."

dude, there are developmentally appropriate ways to explain anything to a child.

"ella came from mommy's tummy. cecelia came from outside of mommy's tummy."

"mommy wanted a sister for ella, so she went and found cecelia."

"we wanted to have another baby, so we decided to adopt you, cecelia."

"we were having trouble having a baby, so we decided to adopt. we were so happy the day you came home. do you have questions about your birth mom?"

"we had been trying for a long time after ella, but we just couldn't conceive. we thought about IVF, but decided to adopt instead. your biological mother decided to put you up for adoption before you were born. we still have the paperwork upstairs if you're interested. her name is brenda brendason."

use your brain.

"if you never tell them, what's the harm?"

there might be medical conditions that are passed on genetically and they might be better off knowing about those.

and like, WHY lmao??? what's your problem?????

can you imagine finding out as an adult, after your parents have passed away, that you were adopted? like, what would you do with that information lmao? that must be so weird.

"people want their own baby, not an adopted one."

this comment always sucks. it's nothing. your adopted baby is your baby. who else's baby is it? anyone you see at work could be an adoptee and you're saying that guy isn't his parents' son because of how they obtained him.

"it's okay that this movie character has always been in love with his sister because she was adopted."

you are a freak. stop doing that.

[box-dwelling]

So l want to go full conspiracy theory about Phoenix's parents so I can figure out my own head canon for it. So indulge me

Disclaimer: this is deeply unhinged over analysis to come at what will only ever be a head canon. I'm not taking away other people's head canons or saying they're wrong. This is all fun. I just started thinking about this a lot and need to write it down

So there are really 3 main categories I want to sort between and then when I've narrowed it down to that I will extrapolate further into.

Theory 1: Phoenix's parents are fine and just chilling off screen.

This is the occums razor approach. We never hear about them so why should we assume they aren't just normal parents? My issues with this are as follows.

Phoenix has a massive tendency to form a found family at the drop of a hat. It is constant. Every single wayward kid he comes across he just fucking adopts and it barely even crosses his mind as a thing he is doing. He just sees a child in need and brings them right into the fold. I'm not saying this isn't a thing people with a functional family unit do, but it normally takes a little more thought than he ever seems to give it. His default seems to be thinking kids in need don't have a safe family to go to. The only time he ever strays from this is with Trucy, who he is both unsure he will be able to effectively care for after being disbarred, and is the only part of the found family he adopts legally. It makes sense to me he'd jump through those hoops when he didn't for someone like say Ema.

My other issue is his attachment issues. He bonds very close connections very quickly to people and I'm not even talking about his defendants. I think it's honestly best shown with his romantic connections.

There's not too much we can really decern from Feenie and Dahlia/Iris because we never really see how Iris was acting during that relationship but the guy is definitely very deeply attached to her. It could easily also just be a bad case of first relationship and young love but it could also be something deeper.

More interesting is Miles. He imprinted on that man like a baby duck. And let's be completely honest here even if he was madly in love, becoming a lawyer for your crush you haven't seen in a decade is absolutely unhinged. Again it is possible for him to do this with a happy family background but I also just don't see it. It seems like the kind of thing a kid without a family would do to the only person who ever stood in his corner. I don't think he act in such an extreme manner if he had a happy home life.

Theory 2: dead parents

So this is compelling and I like it. But my issue here is that he is surrounded by people with dead parents. Many of whom he's had to comfort through said loss or through events retraumating it. As someone who has a dead parent, when you are in that situation if you have personal experience to draw on, you fucking draw on it. You mention that you understand how they feel because you lost a parent too. Losing a parent at a young age is incredibly isolating and when you find someone who shares that experience you tell them because it's a thing only other people with dead parents can ever really understand. I think it would have come up given how many orphans he talks to.

Theory 3: absentee parents.

Spoilers this is my personal take. It explains his attachment issues, his tendency to automatic found family, and the fact he doesn't mention them when consoling orphans. I will devil's advocate and poke a hole though because it's only right.

He does also interact with a few foster kids and adoptees. But I do think this makes more sense than the alternatives. The three that come to mind being Apollo, Miles and Trucy. Trucy makes sense. They absolutely could have had that conversation off screen. Miles' being taken in by Von Karma feels atypical enough that I feel like Phoenix might not bring up his own issues when discussing it given the severity of Miles' trauma. Also if he was a kid that's as just in the system all his life I imagine it wouldn't feel similar to Miles ' situation. Apollo is more complicated but their relationship is such that I think Phoenix just not bring it up in a work environment makes sense. It's also not like he's a kid just enteringnthe system, he's someone else that grew up in it and is now out so Phoenix probably doesn't have much advice or support to offer. They're more in the same boat.

But absentee parents is pretty vague. And I think there's some stuff we can narrow down.

So evidence:

1) Phoenix is stated to be an only child in 2-2. So he is probably to an extent familiar with who his parents are. That's not really the language you use about yourself if you were abandoned as a baby. It also suggests he wasn't in permanent fostering where he'd likely not be as dismissive of having a sibling.

2) the only reference to his mother I can see being made. I will warn you. I am going to examine the fuck out of this.

So as far as I can tell this is the passing reference to Phoenix's mother that is listed on the wiki and in some fandom spaces. There's a lot to unpack her.

First off, this is a turn of phrase from oldbag. It's not an actual reference to the woman existing. However that is not what I find interesting here. It's Edgeworth's reaction. So at this point Miles is fully aware of Phoenix being the same person from his childhood. I've seen some fan places doubt he realises that but this line is from the end of the case and confirms it

But after Oldbag says that, he's audibly unsure and uncomfortable. A part of that is most certainly to do with the case and I'm pretty sure that's as the intent but this is canon dialogue so I get to put on my death of the author cap and interpret wildly beyond what it is intended to mean.

To me at least, it also reads as the kind of discomfort you see when someone refers to a person's parent in a way that is untrue due to unpleasant circumstances. And this is from literally one of the only 3 people we know for certain have some awareness of Phoenix's home life. It sounds like he's made uncomfortable about a reference to Phoenix's mother, then tries to shake it off and direct away from it by talking about the case. This gives us a key bit of information though. Miles knew so whatever happened had to have happened before they were 9.

So my final head canon. Phoenix was to somee extent abandoned by his mother before 9 years old and likely when he was already old enough to have some familiarity with his family. I also think it's likely he wasn't in some kind of permanent foster residence where he might start considering someone being a foster sibling. This could be residential care facility or honestly more likely to me at least being taken in by either his father or other family members but ones who weren't particularly invested in his care.

Thank you for coming to my ted talk

[readyforevolution]

FACTS ABOUT AFRICAN FLAGS

Did you know that most African flags, especially west African flags adoptee the yellow,red and green flags during independence, as a symbol of resistance.

The countries drew inspiration from the Ethiopia flag, because of the resistance they put up against Italy.

Countries like Togo, Benin republic, Ghana, Mali, and Cameroon all use this color of flag.

🇹🇬🇧🇫🇨🇲🇪🇹🇬🇭🇬🇼🇲🇱🇸🇳

The second type of flag is the Marcus gravey flag, it is a horizontal flag of red,black and green trips. Marcus gravey wanted a United Africa, both in home and in diaspora. So he designed a unifying flag.

Countries that took up the flag during independence include Kenya, Malawi, libya and Biafra

🇰🇪🇱🇾🇲🇼🇸🇸

Some countries decided to combine the both flags 🇧🇯🇨🇫🇬🇾🇯🇲🇰🇳🇲🇿🇸🇩🇸🇹🇻🇺🇿🇼🇿🇦

Both flags are know as the pan African flags, they are a unifying flag for africa.

#Amazing

#africa

#truth

#black

#freedom

#freedomofspeech

[awheckery]

DEATH TW and mentions of murder so if that is triggering for you don’t read, but if it’s not then i’d like to ask if you’ve heard of forensic genealogy? while i am uneasy at the prospect of using it to find suspects, it can also be used to find the identities of unidentified decedents, who die of accidental causes or are murdered, and often it’s the only hope to identify those who have been unidentified for decades. the dna doe project is a nonprofit that’s mostly volunteer run, and i think that your research skills could be useful there or somewhere like there. i know this is kind of a random ask to receive, identification of unidentified remains is my special interest but i don’t have the time or training to get better at researching beyond a few tricks here and there.

I feel like we've read the same articles recently; did you see the tumblr post (and linked articles) about Joseph Augustus Zarelli, the Boy in the Box?

Which is to say, yes, I am aware of forensic genealogy and the DNA Doe Project, because like many white American women, I'm a true crime junkie.* My big Thing is investigative procedure tho, so I'm also deeply interested in plane & train crash investigations, medical mysteries, archaeology, anthropology... basically 'what happened, and by which processes and methods do we figure out what happened?'

So far as getting into the game myself, I dunno. I assume there's probably some sort of required formal training, along with the expectation of reliability and sustained effort, and I'm a chronically ill autodidact with ADHD. I'm the research equivalent of a sprinter; investigative genealogy requires a marathoner, because there's so much exhausting, grinding work involved.

Something I've never seen brought up before in any investigation is how many extant family trees are just wrong. Genealogical sites make it too easy to crib notes from other users, and all it takes is one person deciding 'eh that's probably the right guy' for dozens of other amateur researchers to make the same mistake, and then somebody ties that erroneous information to their DNA profile. I don't know how the forensic genealogists deal with that.

You also have to take into account how many people throughout history have just gone missing, or otherwise fallen off the historical record. Just because someone's date of death is absent doesn't mean something nefarious happened to them. (Just because someone's date of death is present doesn't mean it's correct.) People emigrate. They marry. They change their names. They die alone and unknown in a ditch**, or they die somewhere that doesn't make those records public***. Paper records can burn or flood out, and family stories rarely make it down more than one or two generations. History is messy.

I've only done serious research into my family background for two years, in fits and starts interrupted by illness flare ups. Half the time it feels like I find more questions to ask than I get answers. I've found a pair of illegitimate daughters and a handful of adoptees. I've found some two dozen 'missing persons' who may as well have disappeared into thin air, for how suddenly they dropped out of the historical record. I've found a murder victim and a (maybe) would-be murderess.

And four months ago, I found the answer to another family's 150 year old missing person case, and it changed everything I thought I knew about my mother's family.

This is how.

Five months ago, I thought I knew everything there was that could be known about John Robert McDowell.

I knew he was born July 1st of either 1868 or 1869, in Belfast, Northern Ireland. According to his naturalization petition, he came to the United States in April of 1883, when the absolute oldest he could have been was fourteen, and at the time of his naturalization in 1896 he claimed his nationality was English, presumably due to anti-Irish sentiments at the time.

I knew John's handwriting was idiosyncratic: he wrote the J in his name with a rightward upper loop that scooped up again before curving back around the center staff, and his uppercase R was a mess of curlicues. I've never seen the like before or since.

I knew that despite living in America for ten years longer than he'd lived outside it, John still had an accent in 1908 when his second son was born. Spelling is incredibly inconsistent across historical records because up until very recently, it was the practice of the record keepers to write down their best guess at what they heard, and in 1908 a midwife heard and recorded John's surname as McDoul.

John's life was actually remarkably well-documented, in comparison to his contemporaries. I bought myself access to Newspapers.com along with my Ancestry subscription, and he made semi-regular appearances in the Newport News Daily Press for the better part of thirty years as a Navy veteran, successful entrepreneur, and president of a labor union that later became the United Steelworkers Local 8888. (A seemingly throwaway notice in the Daily Press was the only record I've yet been able to find for his divorce, which eventually led me to find out whatever happened to his wife, which is another saga entirely. Pauline, you dirty rotten cheater.)

I knew that John was in and out of the hospital with thyroid cancer, but he was such a tough old bastard it took the better part of fifteen years to kill him, and he died in 1954 at the age of 86.****

According to John's death certificate (and the U.S. Government records at the VA hospital where he died), his parents' names were Thomas McDowell and Isabell Rabb (or possibly Robb, the Accent strikes again.)

This is the only record linked to either of them on Ancestry.com at all.

I have most of a history degree, so I wasn't surprised. There are next to no records of the 1890 census of the United States, and that was down to a fire in the National Archives. Ireland was dragged backwards through hell by the ankles for centuries by a succession of British monarchs and governments, and Belfast was in the prime of especially conflicted territory for much of it. No census records from John's lifetime were kept, and the likelihood his parents would show up in the surviving fragments from 1841 and 1851 was slim to none.

There were transcribed indexes from birth and marriage records available, at least, and I scoured them through, looking for a John McDowell, and there wasn't a single damn one born to a Thomas or Isabelle McDowell in a decade on either side of 1868. There wasn't any record I could find at all of a Thomas McDowell marrying an Isabelle Rabb until well after John left Ireland.

Five months ago, as far as I knew, John Robert McDowell was probably a bastard, who'd either been left out of whatever records were taken at the time, or he was one of the unfortunate ones whose birth record had been lost.

Four months ago, I realized that the record indexes on Ancestry included film numbers, which meant there were pictures of those records to be found somewhere. If they were organized chronologically, I could try to find his birth registration that way. Googling "ireland civil registration records" brought me to the Civil Records search page of a genealogy site run by, of all things, the Irish government's tourism department.

Once again, there wasn't a John McDowell born to the right parents during the right time period, so I went looking for his parents' marriage. And found it.

If they married in 1872, John would probably still technically be a bastard, but I had a point to start from. Once I clicked into the actual scan of the record I nearly snapped myself in half sitting upright in attention, because Thomas McDowell's father's name was Duncan, John named his eldest son Duncan, Isabella's father's name was John, I had to have the right two people, this couldn't be a coincidence.

And then I noticed Isabella was a widow. Isabella was a widow.

Who was your husband, and when did he die, Isabella? I searched again, and found her marriage to a Thomas Logan July 30th, 1866. No men named Thomas Logan died in Belfast between 1866 and 1870, which meant he was probably still alive when John was born. It meant I had been looking in the wrong direction the entire time.

John Robb Logan came into the world on July 1st, 1868, in the Ballymacarrett district of Belfast, the second child of four born to Thomas Logan and Isabella Robb. Once I knew what I was looking for the rest came easy.

John's early life was riddled with tragedies. His younger brother Joseph was six months old when he died in March of 1870. His father died of smallpox in December of the same year, exactly one month after the birth of his sister Mary. Three months before his fifth birthday, his first half-sibling Bella died, at just five months old. And in 1879, his older brother William died after a long, miserably drawn-out illness from spinal tuberculosis.

(As an aside, god, poor Isabella. She had four children with Thomas Logan, and a further nine with Thomas McDowell, and before her early death from a long respiratory illness she buried a husband, two sons, and two daughters. How do you go on after that, how are you not forever shattered?)

If I hadn't been sure I'd found the right family, I was after William died. Thomas McDowell was the person who reported William's death to the registrar's office after sitting by his deathbed. The registrar recorded William as a "child of [the] baker" that Thomas was by profession; Thomas McDowell claimed his stepson as his own.

Duncan McDowell, John's step-grandfather, had a family burial plot in Ballygowan, and he named William Adam Logan as his grandson, with no qualifiers, when they buried him.

All the evidence suggests that the McDowells loved John Robb Logan and his siblings, and he loved them back every bit as much. You don't choose to take on the surname of people you hate, and it seems very much the case that John chose to go by McDowell when he came to America. I'm honestly not sure there was a way for Thomas McDowell to bequeath his name to his stepchildren, given John's brother William died a Logan and his sister Mary married as one.

John Robb Logan disappeared from history after his baptism, and John Robert McDowell made his first confirmed appearance in the historical record in 1883, but I was certain they were one and the same. The problem was proving it to my mother, because McDowell was her family name. She'd grown up with it, as had her sisters and her dozens of cousins and her father and his siblings and her father's father; I only had a paper trail arguing the name she knew didn't belong to any of them by blood.

So I went for blood.

I refuse to give my DNA to Ancestry.com on a principle born from paranoia and ethics concerns. It's absolutely not happening, ever, like hell do I expect a corporation to do the right thing with my genetic material. My mother doesn't share my concerns, either now or four years ago, when she bought an Ancestry DNA kit and then did absolutely nothing with her results besides marvel at the unexpected Swedish heritage in her 'Ethnicity Estimate' because doing anything else looked like too much work.

It took a few days to figure out how to hook my mother's DNA results into the tree I've built, and a few more for all the features to populate, but all told it took less than a week between learning the truth about my great-great-grandfather's parentage and proving it irrefutably with DNA, via several descendants of his full-blooded sister Mary and a grandson of his half-brother Wallace.

Ancestry doesn't tell you when new DNA matches are found, or when someone adds you to their tree (and thank god for that, my mother has somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty thousand matches). To those descendants of Mary Thomasina Logan, the handful of John's descendants who've shelled out for Ancestry DNA kits could be any random person. Frequently the relationships between matches aren't clear, because of all the folks like my mom who never add a tree to their results, or those who don't try to go any further back than their grandparents.

As far as Mary Logan's descendants know, the sons of Thomas Logan dead-ended his line, and when I do find John in their trees there's never more than a birth year and a blank space where there would usually be a year of death. (They all have the wrong Isabella Robb too, but I don't really blame them; apparently Isabella was one of the most popular names for girls for well over a century, and Robbs weren't exactly thin on the ground.)

Someday soon, I'm going to reach out. People who study genealogy do it because they're looking for something: long lost relatives, answers to questions asked too late, or even a better, more personal understanding of history by learning about the people who were there when it happened. Every family has its mysteries and this one, at least, could be solved.

John's story doesn't end here. Here is where it begins.

~

*I'm aware of the problematic nature of White Lady True Crime Brain Poisoning, but I'm gonna have to pull the 'I'm not like other girls' card. I'm incredibly discerning about my crime shows, I hate the fucking cops, and I'm realistic about how unbelievably low my chances are of ever being the victim of a violent crime. I'm white, I'm broke as shit, I'm built like a running back and walk like the Terminator, and most importantly, I'm single and planning to stay that way for the rest of my life. The only way I'm getting murdered is if I happen to get caught in a random mass shooting, which isn't outside the realm of possibility because America.

**In case anyone's gotten this far and is still interested, there's strong evidence that the mystery of the Somerton Man was finally solved last year. At some point I'd like to take a look at the tree the forensic genealogists built tho, because I have some Doubts. There was only one person in that family that fell off the map in the 40's? Just one? I was lightning-strike kinds of lucky enough to find John's real parentage, but I dug up more unanswered questions with it, because two of his half-brothers dropped out of the records after 1901. Completely setting aside the possibility of infidelity in the Webb family and how common inbreeding has been (both historically and in recent memory) in populations of European descent, I have a hard time buying that Carl Webb was the only person who could be the Somerton Man. It's still cool as shit that they have a strong possibility tho.

***Maryland and Kansas specifically can blow me, if somebody died in either of those states I have to find an obituary or a tombstone to get the mcfrickin' date, and I have to either pay money and prove a relationship to see a death certificate, or show up to an archive in person to search on their intranet, MARYLAND WHY DO YOU NOT WANT ME TO KNOW WHEN MY GREAT-GRANDMOTHER DIED. (Being fair, I don't know if she died in Maryland, that's just a great-uncle's best guess, because she ran away from her family in 1949 and nobody ever saw her again after the early 60's. Helen, where the hell did you go?)

****One of the big reasons why I got into genealogy in the first place was to see if I could find how far back the predisposition to early deaths and autoimmune disease went in my family. What I hadn't expected to find was a predisposition for extreme longevity on all sides. Longevity as in 'skewing the life expectancy bell curve' kinds of longevity. As long as someone didn't come down with a freak illness or make a looooooooong string of poor life choices, they were apparently immune to death, which honestly explains a few things about Crazy Grandma, god damn.

[the-everqueen]

like, one of the ways antiblackness shows up in fandom spaces is how Black characters (almost always Black girls and women) become used as props to reify white supremacy. it's not praxis to have your white m/m ship adopt a Black girlchild: that in fact reiterates a Western idealized family unit (two married parents + children) as normative, AND positions a Black character to have her agency and autonomy overridden or ignored in a socially accepted way (children in the UK and US are not recognized as autonomous persons with rights independent of their caregivers). not to mention the Black and Brown child historically being a site for white colonial imagination: the "re-education" of Native children seen as a social good, the isolation and dislocation of transracial adoptees whose discontent is suppressed because it's seen as "ungrateful." literally GIVING a Black character to two white men is treating her as an object.

also fuck anyone who headcanons Hob and Dream adopting Rose Walker. she's a legal adult. get your infantilization of Black women out of here.

[babe-con-el-poder]

In a far away land....that used to be ruled by empires and trade routes to places beyond the southern hemisphere, I was created by a young, beautiful, somewhat lost but well loved woman.

She worked hard to care for others' homes and children. She was friendly and sweet and so unassuming that noone realized she was pregnant until she was about to give birth. But sadly, she knew the baby she would bear would not be safe with her. She had no financial means or quiet home to take la niñita to so they may live a warm and happy life together. There was no welcoming of her new daughter by her family because she knew the unfair shame of being alone and pregnant. She was desperate. And heartbroken.

I was born only 5 lbs and came to the world very early. I stayed in my mother's arms only a week then was brought to my permanent new home. I was more than a lifetime removed from my mother's world. I was surrounded by English speaking white people in a very cold but beautiful countryside. There were gorgeous farms and lots of safe places to play outside. Nothing like the crowded city my mother and her family lived in. But she ached for me. Finally, as her heart began to somehow heal slowly, she had a chance to live closer to me. She was promised a chance to watch me grow and flourish in the English-speaking world.

But life is hell. And I learned this lesson before I could really understand what it fully meant. My mother died tragically in a fiery car accident in my first year of life. If I had not been sent away I would have also perished with her.

Her legacy is ME. She is my guiding light. Her voice has protected me in the darkest hours. I still wonder why me? Is there a why? Does it matter? How could I have survived this insanely tragic beginning to my story and continued on as normal?

I know so much from living this story. I know that we take every moment for granted. I am a transracial, transnational adoptee. I sit in my power having learned from grief and loss as my very first life experience. And I'm here to share and learn.

[angiethewitch]

I'm sorry about the ppl crossing boundaries on the post about your husband. I noticed your response to the sherlock holmes person mentioned you grew up in foster care. were there any good experiences? is it an age-out system? do you get any support when you do? do you know if the welsh system is different from others? how did you meet your husband?

I had quite a turbulent couple of years in the system early on, but eventually I was in a long term placement with my mum and she eventually adopted myself and my brother (who is my only blood related sibling, the rest were either fellow adoptees or my mums bio kids). I didnt really have any good experiences with specifically the system, it was all pretty crap to be honest. the social workers themselves weren't great and messed with my head a lot. because my birth mother gave us up voluntarily, we were still in regular court supervised contact (and nowadays I can see her of my own free will, we're pretty close! she's not a mother to me but more like a friend or a cousin or something) and her social workers were nice, I really liked one specific worker she had. she was a nice Indian lady who once made me a gorgeous embroidery of a tortoise. she didn't have to, she wasn't my worker, but she did it anyway. she could have ignored us and still done her job correctly but she would chat to us and play with us during contact meetings if my birth mother wasn't feeling well or was nervous.

im not really sure if it was an age out system, I think that's more on a case by case basis, but the British system is more focused on getting kids either in long term placements (adopted or otherwise) or returning them to family eventually. the welsh system is just the British system with even less funding somehow. admittedly I don't know much about other peoples experiences, but from what I know the British system is different in the sense there aren't private adoption agencies, its funded by the government and the employees are government employees. from what I understand a lot of American carers are private carers and the adoption agencies pocket the money themselves, but I could be wrong. again I don't really know if you get support, I don't remember a lot from that time of my life, but I do know when I turned 16 my case was closed as I was considered old enough to make my own choices without state supervision. that meant I could see my birth mother without supervision and whenever I felt like it, which I did, and we grew a lot closer without a support worker stood there taking notes! I cant really speak for other people though, I don't really know or remember much. from what my family and my mum told me, there wasn't really much support after I was adopted to be honest, theoretically I was still "in the system" but in practice I was effectively left on my own from my adoption day onwards.

I met my husband through a friend, one day my friend asked if I fancied going for a drive with her and her cousin. I was actually with the girl i was seeing at the time, we weren't official or exclusive, although getting there slowly. she was invited along too. my friends cousin pulled up outside my flat and out popped this beautiful man. I thought he was much older than me because 1) he could drive and 2) he was tall and muscular and most blokes my age looked my age. turns out he's only 6 months older than me, he just looks like an absolute unit and much older. he recalls at the time that his cousin was trying to get him out socialising, because he'd actually only just started to recover from his disability and being bedbound for his entire teenage life so far. he'd only really just gained the ability to walk again at the time. he said his cousin directed him to a random flat in a rough town and out I came, an excitable manic skinny blue haired girl who he heavily suspected was on drugs (I was - I was in the depths of my cocaine addiction at the time) with a small girl in tow. apparently I danced all around the place talking a million miles an hour and hopped in the car and away we went. we ended up walking up a mountain that day. from that moment on we were inseperable, he was my best friend. I broke things off with the girl I was seeing when she started getting a little possessive, and started dating this guy who was really bad news. my husband was there for me through all of it, he was genuinely my best mate, and when things ended very badly with this guy (it's a whole other story) we started hanging out on a daily basis. he said he fell for me very quickly and decided he was going to marry me one day.

funnily enough, he'd actually known of me for years. I was his instagram crush for about 3 years before we met, and I ended up being best friends with his high school crush (you've met her, in my recent youtube video about pride. she was my maid of honour) so he knew of me far before I met him. he says he can't believe he managed to get in a relationship with his teenage instagram crush. he thinks too highly of me honestly, he utterly adores me and I adore him. we were pretty much joined at the hip from the second we met.

I will say "whirlwind romance" is an understatement, we got engaged very quickly and married just over a year after getting into a relationship. we were dumb kids playing at adulthood and we were very lucky things turned out so good, because it could have gone very badly. I think it helped that he was my best friend before and had seen me in every state imaginable - blackout drunk, manic, psychotic, self destructive, angry, sad - so he knew exactly how turbulent my life was and he decided he loved me anyway. he supported me through rehab and through the process of getting diagnosed with schizophrenia and the treatment that entailed. thankfully as we grew up we grew together and not apart. People were definitely right when they said we were too young and it was too soon though, we're just lucky we seemed to be perfectly fit to handle eachothers crap. he's the person I feel I can be completely myself around and he's supported me through so much. he's had his own struggles with physical and mental health, but I won't get into that, its his story to tell.

sorry for such a long answer, I know you only wanted to know how I met him, but I felt like telling you more. I hope this answers your questions! have a good day!

[gatheringbones]

[“One reader chided her, saying she should express “a little more gratitude” to her American mother and father.

Adoptees were used to hearing this expectation of gratitude. Whether they had grappled with challenges in their childhood—dealing with ambient racism that their usually white parents couldn’t or wouldn’t understand—or had largely been happy in their adoptive homes, many commonly experienced their adoption as loss. Many felt they had become “church projects” in their undiversified communities. (Of the 150,000 Korean adoptees in the United States, a full 10 percent were sent to Minnesota, which adopts more children internationally per capita than any other state in the United States, thanks in part to the tradition of adoption among the state’s heavily Scandinavian population.)

Although JaeRan Kim, former author of the adoptee blog Harlow’s Monkey, described her childhood among Minnesota evangelicals as “idyllic in many ways” and maintains a good relationship with her adoptive family, she nonetheless grew up feeling at times that her parents had adopted her to score points for “their heavenly tally.” When her family’s church talked about mission work in other countries where people were “unsaved,” it felt like the comments were directed at her, intentionally or not. “I always felt there was this underlying sense of, ‘Aren’t you lucky that you were saved, and that you’re here, and that you’re not one of those heathens in fill-in-the-blank country.’”

Kevin Vollmers, a Korean adoptee who began the adoption reform group blog Land of Gazillion Adoptees, agrees, saying, “Once you save somebody or when you are ‘saved,’ there is always a power dynamic with the people who saved you.”]

kathryn joyce, the child catchers: rescue, trafficking, and the new gospel of adoption

[vex-bittys]

XingYu walks in with her veritable army of bittys in tow, Snickernoodle and Stein poking out from her hoodie to wave before diving back in a giggling fit. “Hi Vex, it’s been awhile! That new quiz of yours helped me realize my not-so-little bitty family is the perfect environment for a Papython! If there’s any interested of course.” Lantern, who was in her arms get placed down due to getting the excited wiggles. “As well as anyone else that wants to join the snuggle pile that is this family.”

*It's never difficult to find a Papython who is willing to join a large, snuggly bitty family, especially since adoptions have been on hold for so long. As soon as you make the request for a Papython, you see them all huddle together to decide who gets go to the new home. The group of Papythons parts, revealing the elected adoptee. The remaining Papythons cheer loudly as he slithers forward.

*It's such an easy adoption! You lean down to greet your new Papython and introduce him to your bitties, but then you see movement out of the corner of your eye. There is a brief flash of red, yellow, and black, and you see a little tail disappear behind a shelving unit. Clearly, this bitty is shy.

*You make a big deal of deliberately not looking at the lamia's hiding spot while still managing to keep it in your field of vision. Sure enough, a little Coral soon peeks out from behind the shelf. He must sense that you can see him because he darts quickly back under cover. You lead the Papython towards the front desk to fill out paperwork, occasionally glancing back to see if the Coral is following you. Sure enough, he is.

*You arrive at the desk and lift the Papython up to sign the papers, agreeing to be adopted. Your other bitties crowd around excitedly. You try to figure out where the Coral is... and see him pressed against the Papython, trying to be inconspicuous. There on the adoption paper is a pair of signatures instead of one: one for a Papython and one for a Coral.

Artwork by redkammy

[luckydragon10]

P&P Chapters 60 and 61 (FINAL)

(Chapters 58 and 59)

The penultimate sentimeter check-in:

Darcy is in the positives!! He has +10 points.

Lizzy is at +30.

Yay. 😁

~~~

Chapter 60

Lizzy: "To be sure, you knew no actual good of me—but nobody thinks of that when they fall in love.”

Cute.

Lizzy: “You might have talked to me more when you came to dinner.” Darcy: “A man who had felt less, might.”

Oh dear. These two are starting to get embarrassing.

Lizzy: "But tell me, what did you come down to Netherfield for? Was it merely to ride to Longbourn and be embarrassed? or had you intended any more serious consequence?”

She's really going to spend their whole lives eviscerating him. WOW. Okay, I'll allow an extra 5.

(Lizzy in a letter to Mrs. Gardiner) "I am happier even than Jane; she only smiles, I laugh."

Another cute one.

Ahh, but Mr. Bennet's letter to Mr. Collins is fantastic.

Rest of the chapter is all quick recap of informing various people about the engagement, it seems.

~~~

Chapter 61 (FINAL)

Mr. Bingley and Jane remained at Netherfield only a twelvemonth. So near a vicinity to her mother and Meryton relations was not desirable even to his easy temper, or her affectionate heart. 

Pffft. "Honey, it's time to move farther away." "THANK FUCK."

Kitty, to her very material advantage, spent the chief of her time with her two elder sisters. In society so superior to what she had generally known, her improvement was great. 

OMG, instant adoptee! 👏 Not expected but really a very nice end-game addition to the story.

Ugh, so much talk about Lydia and Wicky here at the end. Adds a sour note to the wrap-up.

By Elizabeth’s instructions, she (Miss Darcy) began to comprehend that a woman may take liberties with her husband which a brother will not always allow in a sister more than ten years younger than himself.

Training up the next generation. *wipes tear from eye* Another 5 points for mentorship. I do appreciate that.

With the Gardiners, they were always on the most intimate terms. Darcy, as well as Elizabeth, really loved them; and they were both ever sensible of the warmest gratitude towards the persons who, by bringing her into Derbyshire, had been the means of uniting them.

Oh INTERESTING piece to end on. That's the last chunk of it? Did not expect that to be the conclusion. I'll have to have a think on that. 👀

~~~

The FINAL sentimeter tally:

Darcy is at at +10.

Elizabeth is at +40.

~~~

I'll probably mull the book over a bit before I do an overall write up, but in short, I did enjoy it.

BUT. I think I especially loved being able to chat with the die-hard fans who followed along with the reaction. It was a new way to experience a book, and it has added to my enjoyment so, so much. My humble thanks. 💖

[theanonymousadoptee]

Okay, Let's Talk About It: Adoption TV PSAs? Commercials? Ads?

Has anyone noticed the increasing number of adoption and foster care commercials on TV (adoption commercials in particular)? As someone who is old enough to remember them as a rarity at, like, 2 am on a news channel if you kept the TV on for background noise, it's harder to ignore when the appearance of one occurs at the start of every local news commercial break.

I'll be honest, as a child seeing them, I always kind of found them unsettling. I wasn't sure why, but I'd watch them and laugh at how much of a caricature it was of my life. What white people think adoption is, The kids, ugh, the kids on these commercials too that feel obligated to lie to please the people who were so gracious enough to open their home to you like the Little Orphan Annie. *insert eye-roll here*

I saw one last night, not too long after the Nuggets game, and when I was uploading an article to Medium, I added "#adoption," and there were 137 people who followed that tag. I also added "#adoptee." wanna know how many people follow that tag? Seven. That tells me 130 people are looking to adopt a child or are already adoptive parents. Seven adoptees, the people who are the ones being given to another family, are being vastly underrepresented. According to the latest data from the U.S. Department of State, there were approximately 4,059 international adoptions by U.S. citizens in 2019. It's not clear how many adoptees are currently living in the United States overall. Still, according to Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, an estimated 1.5 million adopted children live in the United States; how is it that on a platform that boasts 60 million monthly active readers, only 7 follow the hashtag "adoption?"

It clicked for me why I found the commercials so unsettling. The overly optimistic commercials fail to convey the difficulty of adopting a child, especially one that is in the foster care system and is older or is of a different race than the adoptive parents. What's funny is even as I write this, AI has suggested my following sentence be:Adoption agencies often provide resources to help families overcome these barriers," when in fact, they kind of don't. They only ever end up benefiting the parents. Adoption records are beginning to open up to those who even have such records. However, "non-identifying" information is still the "go-to" for most states, including the state I was born in (Missouri) and the state I live in (Ohio).

The problem is that these agencies can offer all the help they want; it won't matter. It won't matter until we change the stigma around adoption. Adoptees need a safe place to speak about the pain of their adoption loss and grief without feeling guilty or shameful for feeling the way they do. We won't open up about our experiences because we don't want to make our adoptive parents feel bad when we ask questions. We don't want them to feel like they're being replaced. Frequently, even wanting to know where we come from makes us feel guilty because we shouldn't want to know. After all, they aren't the ones who raised us. The entire existence of an adoptee is a contradiction. Contradictions between feelings, belonging, and identity are everyday struggles.

These commercials are unsettling because they do not accurately portray the pain that all parties feel during the adoption process. Ann Fessler addresses this directly in her book, "The Girls Who Went Away," when she says, quote: "Adoption is, by its very nature, a painful process, one that brings into sharp relief the loss felt by all parties involved: the adoptive parents who long for a child; the birth mother who may never forget the child she gave away; and the adoptee who, even in the most secure and loving home, feels the sting of being separated from their biological roots." Fessler makes a compelling point here, prompting us to think about the adoptive parent's loss in all of this, seeing as they will never look into their child's face and see themselves reflected in them. Some adoptive mothers will never know what it feels like to carry a baby in their stomachs, to feel the baby kick and move and squirm, or experience food cravings or hormones, they'll never know the pain of birth, nor will they have any advice to offer when their adopted children consider becoming parents and having children of their own.

This kind of loss is devastating for all parties. The overly optimistic and cheerful tone represented in pro-adoption commercials frustrates me because it just doesn't accurately reflect the reality of being an adoptee. If it did, outsiders wouldn't feel comfortable saying "be grateful" when a disagreement occurs between parent and child. People wouldn't say to you as an adoptee, "Oh, I'm so sorry," when you tell them you're adopted, and "Oh, how wonderful of you" when your adoptive mom tells them.

Look, I'm not claiming that this is some easy thing to navigate, but an honest conversation needs to be had here because judging by the quantity of these commercials, the fact that they're government funded, and aired on prime-time television, I'd wager all of the GOP's abortion bans are backfiring, because if this doesn't scream "propaganda," I'm not sure what does.

I don't know what the path forward is. Banning abortion isn't the solution. If anything, that would exacerbate the issue, and using adoption as an alternative to abortion isn't the move; I don't know that I believe adoption is a viable solution anymore because I'm not sure there is a way to mitigate the potential damage that can be caused. Whatever route is taken, we need to put the needs of children first. We can all agree a lot of time and energy goes into helping both parents (adoptive and biological) cope with their grief and loss. At the same time, the child's mental health and development essentially go ignored. This needs to change before we start telling prospective parents how great it is to be an adoptive parent and what it means to be a parent to a child suffering from adoption loss and grief. Adoptive parenting is a meaningful journey filled with unique challenges and rewards. It requires patience, empathy, and understanding to nurture a healthy attachment. Making sure that adoptees feel loved and supported can lead to a positive and fulfilling life for all parties involved.