This thought came to me last night.
I guess I had read one-too-many posts on adoption as a victory, while suicide is a tragedy. It all came together like a head-on collision: When we ask women to “make an adoption plan,” what we are really saying is, “Die, and let me have your child.”
How often have you heard people chastise those who decided to end their lives as playing God? It is called a sin. The dead or would-be dead are weak, disturbed, selfish, short-sighted, and angry. Much discussion ensues on how suicide must be prevented. It doesn’t matter why the individual wanted to die, the act of suicide must be stopped.
But when a woman thinks about relinquishing her child, there is no outcry. Instead, she is encouraged to go through with it, not unlike spectators on a sidewalk, mocking the desperate individual on the ledge with, “Jump, jump!”
To even consider adoption makes her a “birthmother”, a lesser person. She’s all at once a whore and a saint, no matter her final decision, if it even is her decision. To relinquish is selfless and selfish, loving and hateful, a promise of a better life and abandonment.
But let’s not forget, she didn’t abort. So the adoptee needs to be grateful for that as well. Even though adoptees have said they feel like “nine-month abortions” by being severed from their mother at birth.
If you argue there is no comparison, I counter that to the baby, there is no difference. Either way, their life-source is gone. “As if born to,” for the adopted family also means, “As if dead,” for the birth family. And we are expected to be happy about it. As writer Julie A. Rist famously quoted, “The adoptee is expected to dance along with everyone else on his or her own mother’s virtual grave.”
When babies are removed from their mother at birth for any reason, they shut down, go silent. This is a known phenomenon in the medical world. I did this myself, only waking when my mother held me and spoke to me two days later, then fell silent once again when she was “gone.” My adoptive mother noted in my baby book that I was “quiet and good, slept all the way home,” the following day, not realizing the sorrowful reason behind it.
“It’s not like adoption is a tragedy,” someone recently threw at me.
Really, is it any wonder why adoptees are four times more likely to attempt suicide? The “chosen” sometimes just can’t take it any more. The endless feeling of disconnect combined with society’s constant demand for our gratitude becomes overwhelming.
The photo symbolizes present-day adoption: A locked gate. The original mother is on one side, the adoptee and adoptive parents on the other. The gate may be beautiful – perhaps they can even see each other through the bars – but it keeps them apart. Like a prison cell or a gated community, depending on which side one is on at the moment.
The subjects of abortion and suicide make people very uncomfortable. To distance themselves, they repeat platitudes like, “It’s a permanent solution to a temporary problem.” But adoption is sacred. They claim adoption is not “playing God,” even while misusing Scripture to support the very act of playing God: “For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.” (Rom 8:15) Encouraging women to give up their children so you can play savior is not Christian. It is encouraging someone to kill themselves so you can have what they have.
Only when adoption is considered as wrong and unnatural as slavery will adoptees really be free.
Elle Cuardaigh is author of The Tangled Red Thread and contributor to The Adoptee Survival Guide.
elle cuardaigh 
So f’ing brilliant Elle – thank you. I am so angry today – I can’t handle any more of the propaganda and chosen child bullsh*t. Just thank you.
Well done, as always! yes, once a woman considers adoption she is told it is a brave and courageous thing. Really? Seems much more brave to keep and raise a child. And while she is encouraged to to the “loving” thing, if she contests the adoption, the fact that the thought about adoption is held against her as an indication of unfitness.
Another POWERFUL, thought provoking post by an amazing writer!
You have finally put in to words what adoptees and First Mothers feel. Beyond brilliant and so thankful for your voice.
As a birth/first mother I struggle with wanting to die and not giving into my inner voice on bad days. No matter how much I’ve tried to forgive myself, I still hate myself and feel my life is worthless. I don’t have a “temporary problem” either unfortunately, unless I got amnesia and forgot all about the child I had. That pain is definitely permanent. I just wish something else would kill me.
I cannot even imagine the pain you must feel. I hope you hold on and find meaning in your life, for your own sake and for your son, so that one day you can really connect again.
I held on for 37 years, only to be found and now slowly buried alive!
I agree 100%. Even though I have 2 kept children that I love with all of my heart, most days I feel like I’m drowning in grief and anxiety and wish for death.
this is very well written. and yes women torn from their child mourn every day. reunion is only a slight balm since we still missed the formative years. most of society thinks women who lost babies, deserved to lose them and are less than human. when the children of their devisiveness tell how it ruined their lives, they have to start listening.
Thank you. Three years after I lost my son because I was unwed and considered unfit to mother him, I married and became “the perfect mother” for my daughter. If only I’d had just one year of financial support my daughter would have grown up with her older brother instead of meeting him 40 years later.
Reblogged this on wsbirthmom and commented:
W’s adoption definitely was a permanent solution to my oh so VERY temporary problems. Called pregnancy hormones.
Reblogged this on elle cuardaigh and commented:
Reblogging for Flip The Script on National Adoption Month.
Reblogged this on ☀️ army of one ☀️ and commented:
Only when adoption is considered as wrong and unnatural as slavery will adoptees really be free.
Elle wrote: “when a woman thinks about relinquishing her child, there is no outcry. Instead, she is encouraged to go through with it, not unlike spectators on a sidewalk, mocking the desperate individual on the ledge with, “Jump, jump!” ‘
The above immediately made me recall words in Rebecca, a novel by Daphne Du Maurier’ made by Mrs Danvers in the following dialogue as she tried to induce Maxim de Winter’s2nd and young wife to commit suicide :
‘Mrs. Danvers: [opening the shutters] You’re overwrought, madam. I’ve opened a window for you. A little air will do you good.
[as the second Mrs. de Winter gets up and walks toward the window]
Mrs. Danvers: Why don’t you go? Why don’t you leave Manderley? He doesn’t need you… he’s got his memories. He doesn’t love you, he wants to be alone again with her. You’ve nothing to stay for. You’ve nothing to live for really, have you?
[softly, almost hypnotically]
Mrs. Danvers: Look down there. It’s easy, isn’t it? Why don’t you? Why don’t you? Go on. Go on. Don’t be afraid… ‘ (quotes from Alfred Hitchcock’s production of Rebecca)
All of this in an almost sensual and hypnotic seduction, the same sotto voice used by a seductress to her would-be lover.
Although modern and so-called civilized societies in the west don’t directly suggest that a women kill herself to give another her child, she is induced to turn the child over to someone else … an agency or even another woman waiting literally by the door to receive the newborn. Few comfort the distressed mother-one who has been seduced by the society extolling the ‘virtues’ of relinquishment and incusing her to relinquish that child. She is handed a paper with space for her signature, while someone says peremptorily-much like Daddy Warbucks in the musical, Annie: ‘ Sign! Just sign!’
Unfortunately adoption is ‘usual and customary’ – just as is abortion- in this 21st century; and equally unfortunate is the dismissed or ignored practice of child abandonment by parents/family members in which the relinquishors are never punished, and in which some states actively encourage the abandonment. Child abandonment is a criminal offense, but in too many places the criminals walk away with impunity as laws include limitations and even ways to avoid the law in their legislation. The states collude with the criminals leaving the child victims to in essence, fend for themselves- something which becomes an entrenched habit of self-defense throughout our lives-we who were clearly unwanted by our own parents.
No adoptee is or can we ever be free because there is no nor can there ever be justice or just reparations for our pain and suffering.
SPOT ON Elle, as always. It is against all of nature and all that is ethical, moral and humane that we ENCOURAGE mothers to give their children away to strangers with the impossible to keep promises of a “better” life!
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