My Story Related

Mirah Riben

My life was irrevocably changed in 1968 when, lacking support, I succumbed to the pressure to surrender of my first-born child, a daughter, to adoption, becoming one of an estimated four million American mothers to surrender a newborn to adoption between 1940 to 1970; two million during the 1960s alone.

Like other mothers who turned a tragic loss into improving a social condition, i.e. Maureen Kanaka who established Megan’s Law in memory of her slain daughter; the founders of MADD, and many others, my mission in life is family preservation; prevention of unnecessary, unwarranted losses; providing honest and open alternative child care as a last resort to care for orphans and children who have no family able to provide safely for them without eradicating their heritage; family reunification; and regulation and licensure of adoption providers and agencies.

After losing my firstborn I became associate editor of three magazines in New York, married and bore three children. The following decades were filled with parental activities: playgroups, scout meetings, class mother, car-pooling, PTA, and La Leche League meetings. But I never forgot, as I had been advised to do.

Instead, I began a path of self-education, reading voraciously about adoption. Learning of adoptees and parents searching and reuniting, I longed for assurance that my daughter was thriving and cared for. I became one of the early members of Concerned United Birthparents, Inc. and within ten years, along with four other women, co-founded Origins, Inc., a New Jersey-based, national organization for mothers who lost their children to adoption, helping mothers deal with ongoing loss, grief, PTSD, shame, anger, search and reunion. A “pioneer,” I was among the very first mothers to “come out,” speaking publicly in the 1980’s.

As support group facilitator, I consoled mothers who found their adopted-out children in far less than the “better homes” than had been promised. Adoptees died in infancy while their mothers dreamed of them growing up, or had become disturbed adolescents, often on drugs. Adoptive parents divorced and died leaving adoptees with a single mother or terminated adoption. Mothers found children who had been physically and sexually assaulted, abandoned, imprisoned, killed in car crashes and even murdered. Much of this was documented my first book, shedding light on…The Dark Side of Adoption (1988) giving voice to what had heretofore been called the “invisible member of the adoption triad.”

Family members separated by adoption who search in the vast majority of states in which records are sealed are forced to deal with a quasi-legal underground. I knowingly risked imprisonment believing it was an act of civil disobedience to help reunite hundreds of families and also helped mothers prevent unnecessary adoption by providing temporary shelter. One mother I assisted subsequently married the father of her child and the mother of the other relented after seeing the baby and took them both back in. After the 1987 murder by Joel Steinberg of his illegally adopted child, Lisa, I coordinated a candle light vigil for Lisa and reunited the toddler boy found illegally adopted by Steinberg and Hedda Nussbaum. Travis Smeigel has remained with the family who thought they couldn’t parent him, is now in college.

I was Director-at-Large of the American Adoption Congress and in 1990 organized a speak at the first march on Washington as well as a Red Tape ceremony at the Hotel Roosevelt in New York.
In 1983 I found my daughter’s adoptive family and offered updated medical information and to open the closed adoption. I later began to develop a relationship with my daughter. In 1995, her kids grown, employed full-time and attending college, I learned that my firstborn daughter had taken her life at just 27 years of age, another tragic statistical phenomenon of adoption. I took a step back from adoption issues as I healed from the loss, which took a toll physically as well as emotionally.

Ten years later, retried and on disability, I returned to adoption work to find that domestic infant adoption became the province of the private entrepreneurial sector with lax regulation. The dwindling “supply” of babies due to changes in social mores and access to birth control, coupled with increased “demand” left adoption no longer about finding homes for babies who needed care, but about finding babies to fill a demand by those willing to pay.  Outraged at the coercion, corruption and exploitation, I began research on what was to become my second book, The Stork Market:  America’s Multi-Billion Dollar unregulated Adoption Industry (2007). Once again an advocate and activist, determined to fight the Goliath baby brokering industry, I have persevered despite opposition of my efforts to change an accepted paradigm by exposing aspects of adoption that are difficult for many to accept or even believe.

I am currently Vice President of Communications of Origins-0USA.org. My books can be found at: www.AdvocatePublications.com.

Mirah

I don’t understand why so many families try to avoid visiting with each other during the holidays. They allow petty feuds and misunderstandings to get in the way of spending precious time together.

There are many adoptees in the world who would gladly trade places with them — adoptees who would love to spend time with their families but can’t because of closed adoption records, closed doors and closed hearts. They may never know the family with whom they would love to share the rest of their lives.

Many New Jersey adoptees have been waiting a long time for the opportunity to know their birth families. But since bill A752, which would make original birth certificates and other related information available to adoptees, has yet to be heard by the full Assembly, they will have spent another holiday season (and quite possibly the year ahead) without them.

My siblings and I never were supposed to meet. Our birth mother wanted it that way. In fact, she did everything in her power to keep us apart. But I walked into my family’s life one day anyway, unannounced, after 35 years. I appeared out of nowhere. I felt like an intruder — like someone who had burst onto a stage in someone else’s play. I had a good reason for being there, whether I was invited or not. My son was very ill and I needed to find my birth mother. I also needed to find my siblings. If my son’s illness ran in our family, there was a good chance that one of my siblings had it, too.

When my birth mother signed the adoption papers for me and my twin sister, she hoped we would disappear forever from her life and the lives of our siblings. She was terrified we would find one another some day and expose all her secrets. And our mother had a lot of secrets.

There are seven of us altogether (that we know of). After our mother’s arrest for child neglect, some of her children were placed with family members. Others went into foster care. Our birth mother reared the youngest sister, who was told the lie that her siblings were all “living out in California.” Our sister was shocked to learn our brother was actually living within walking distance of her house. Two other sisters also were unknowingly living in a different town, a few blocks away from each other. Mere miles separated the rest of us.

I was warmly welcomed into my family. Since finding each other 17 years ago, my siblings and I have spent every holiday season together. How could we not? We’ve got to make up for a lot of time that we lost. Grateful as I am for the time that I’ve gotten to spend with my siblings — one of the greatest blessings to come out of our now-healthy son’s crisis — there are moments when I’m selfish for more. Why did our mother try so hard to keep us apart?

Shame. That’s the word that filled our mother’s heart. An alcoholic woman in the 1950s who had children fathered by numerous men, she was an embarrassment to her family. When her family disowned her, her life spiraled downward until she was virtually destitute. So she lied a lot. She moved a lot. She changed her name a lot. She suffered excruciatingly until she tragically took her own life, before I had a chance to meet her. But I miss her whenever our family is together. Even though she and I never stood in the same room together, I try to conjure her presence whenever my siblings and I trade presents and stories and smiles.

I imagine her smiling, too. I imagine her finally at peace with all of her secrets — secrets that don’t matter in the least to any of her children.

I hope she knows what does matter to us is that we’re a family again. Nothing can compare to spending time with your family, whether you’ve always known them or are just getting to know them.

www.carolbarbieri.com

Story Credit: Asbury Park Press

When I was 19, I found myself unwed and pregnant. Through my own young beliefs and self doubts, the shock, disappointment and fears of those close to me and the encouragement of an adoption agency, I came to believe that the relinquishment and adoption of my first born son would be the answer to all the possible threats that would face us both in the life as a young single mother and a small child.

And though I loved my newborn baby with a fierceness and force that I had never felt before, I was assured that I was strong and selfless and would be a bringer of great joys to others with my emotional sacrifice. Never given birth before, never being a mother before the two precious days in the hospital holding my soon to be lost son, and told that what I was feeling was expected hormones; I underestimated the power of this primal connection and I went through the surrender like a good birthmother should. I signed my rights to be a mother away, dried my tears and went home to continue on my life as expected.

Nineteen years and 111 days later, I found myself on a great adventure.  I was returning to Boston, to the place of my son’s birth and this time, I would cry tears of joy as I was going to finally see him again.

It had taken us almost 2 years to get to the point of meeting face to face.

His was a traditional closed adoption as it occurred in 1987 and at that time, open adoptions were still not the norm.  I had no knowledge of what his name was, but without ever deciding that I would search for him, I did.  Once, I began it was as if a dam had broken within me and I was determined, obsessed, convinced that I would be able to locate him. And within three days, I had.  A trail of breadcrumbs had led me right to him. The feeling I had that night, 3 am, as I finally laid down to sleep was completely overwhelming. Just the knowledge that if I decided to, I could get into my car and drive just to breathe in the same air as him, was so satisfying.

Within the next nine months, I had made direct contact with him. It went against everything that is thought to be right about adoption. I was breaking many unspoken rules that people believe to be legal truths, but when it came down to it, I was a mother and my son was one click away. He was mere months away from being 18 and something inside me knew that I had to hit send. And so I did. When he understood who I was, his message read back to me: “Holy Smokes…Mom?”

I cannot explain how I knew certain things about him, but I did. I cannot explain how, raised among people so unlike myself, in a completely different environment, I could still recognize his inner nature.  There were so many similarities, it was more than coincidence. How we had the same taste in music. How we had the same sense of style. How a mutual love of Dr. Pepper, wild thunder storms and Mohawks connected us in a way that time and distance could not break. My delight that he too, owned his own pirate flag, as did myself, and my brother and my second son, and his amazement to find that we were descendants of pirates on both sides of my family tree.

And then we met.  And it was all true but even more. By the time we had finished our 9 ½ hour marathon of non stop talking, we were not only finishing each other’s sentences and giddy with happiness, but were both aghast at the undeniable strength of our bond. Nature trumped nurture hands down.

Later that year, my husband and I finally got around to getting married and Max came. It was a huge surprise for me and not only was I marring a man I loved, not only was I surrounded by friends and family, but for the first time in my life all my four children would be together in one place. I can easily say, without a doubt, it was the best day of my life.

There was not one person there who did not remark in some way about the incredible natural way that we all fit together. It was not just a mother and son who were reunited, but we were like a tribe that had become whole again. We were his people.

They only bittersweet sadness that crept in was the knowledge that we never really had to be separated to begin with.

I loved him at 19 as I loved him at 40. I was a good mother at 23 and with some small encouragement I would have been a good mother at 20. Yes, he had a good life and yes, his parents were happy and so was he, but the surrender just didn’t need to happen.  They would not ever have known what they missed and I would have missed him forever, because even without knowing him, I knew him.

If you would like to learn more of my story and how to help prevent the needless separation of mothers and children through adoption, please visit my adoption blog: Musings of the Lame.

Claudia