Sunday, June 22, 2008

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  "I was born to a woman I never knew and raised by another who took in orphans.  I do not know my background, my lineage, my biological or cultural heritage.  But when I meet someone new, I treat them with respect.... For after all, they could be my people."   -  James Michener, Author
   

  "Natural children, who have parents, siblings, and other blood-related relatives, are grounded in a reality from which they can spin their images. But adoptees do not feel grounded or connected by any such reality. Much of their imagery is not centered on the adoptive family in which they live as if they belong, but rather in fantasy and imagination. They have a sense that their very perceptions are deceiving them. They have lost the ability to distinguish between what is real and what is supposed to be real."  - Betty Jean Lifton, Journey of the Adopted Self

  "In all of us there is a hunger, narrow and deep, to know our heritage, to know who we are and where we have come from.  Without this enriching knowledge, there is a hollow yearning.  No matter what our attainments in life, there is a vacuum, an emptiness and a most disquieting loneliness!" -  Alex Haley, Author 
  
  "The prisoner disintegrated because he could never find out what he was guilty of" - The Trial by Kafka
  
  "The oppressed should rebel, and they will continue to rebel and raise disturbance until their civil rights are fully restored to them and all partial distinctions, exlusions, and incapacitations are removed."  --  Thomas Jefferson
  

  "...Being separated from their birth mothers and handed over to strangers in the adoption process is the only trauma where the victims are expected by the whole of society to be grateful..."  -Nancy Verrier, The Primal Wound
  
  

  "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." - George B. Shaw

  
  

  “The only way around is through” - Robert Frost
  
  "Never doubt that a small group of thougthful, committed citizens can change the world;  indeed, it is the only thing that ever has".- Margaret Mead
  

  "We shall not cease our explorations, and the end of our exploring will be to arrive back where we started and know the place for the first time" - T.S. Eliot

  "Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly." - Langston Hughes
  

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  Betty Jean Lifton, Journey of the Adopted Self

  "Adoptees must weave a new self-narrative out of the fragments of what was, what might have been, and what is. This means they must integrate their two selves: the regressed baby who was abandoned and the adult the baby has become.
  
  "They must make the artificial self real, and allow the forbidden self to come out of hiding. They must integrate what is authentic in these two selves, and balance the power between them. It is during this period that the adoptee feels most vulnerable, because neither self is in charge.
  "They must accept that they cannot be fully the birth parent's child any more than they could be fully the adoptive parents' child. They must claim their own child, become their own person, and belong to themselves."
  
  

  Nancy Verrier, The Primal Wound

  "...Adoptive parents have been lied to about the ease with which these babies would accept them as parents..."

  
  "The adoptee is paralyzed by the belief that he was responsible for his own abandonment because he wasn't a good enough baby to keep. By believing this, he is giving the mother who left him omnipotent wisdom in having made this decision, when she was actually a confused, vulnerable, and often very young person acting from fear or other people's advice..."
  

  
  "...Too often misguided clinicians advise the parents to send the child to an adolescent treatment center or special school. They are completely unaware of the significance this solution has on the child. Whereas in some cases this may be the last resort and only thing to do, on the psychological level it only reinforces and exacerbates the abandonment issue for adoptees."
  
  "...The need to defend against the possibility of abandonment or other loss intrudes into almost every relationship..."
  
  "...The general public still finds it difficult to accept that these biological mothers and their adult children have a right to find one another..."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  • 6:55 PM
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