I saw this awhile back, and I've just got to repost it, at least in places   
   where my bio-mom won't see it.  I don't want to bring up anything bad for her   
   again, but this is something that, I think, has value in it for a lot of ppl.   
      
   -=-=-=-=-=-=-   
      
   Here's the post that started it; I've got a bit of personal passion and   
   stake in the matter, as you'll soon see:   
      
   An African-American welfare-dependent mother of three told me this story about   
   the birth of her son with Down syndrome. She had been planning to put the   
   newborn up for adoption, a decision she had reached shortly before his birth,   
   due to the domestic stress and violence with which she was living. When the   
   baby was born and diagnosed, a white social worker came to see her about   
   placing the child. The mother asked what would become of her baby and was told,   
   ‘We’ll probably find a rural farm family to take him.’ ‘Then what?’   
   she queried. ‘He’ll grow up outside, knowing about crops and animals,’   
   was the reply. ‘Then what,’ the mother repeated. ‘Maybe he’ll even grow   
   up to work on that farm,’ the social worker replied. ‘Sounds like slavery   
   to me,’ answered the mother, who decided to take her baby home. This imagery   
   and its legacy contrast strongly with the stories many white mothers tell, in   
   which they fantasize a peaceful, rural life ‘in nature’ as the perfect   
   placement for their children with Down syndrome.   
      
      
   -=-=-=-=-=-=-   
      
   A reply from someone else:   
      
   in Testing Women, Testing the Fetus: The Social Impact of Amniocentesis in   
   America by Rayna Rapp, p. 271.    
   This paragraph like, knocked the wind out of me.    
   (via this-reading-by-lightning)   
   I am so glad that this woman had the necessary cultural slant to see right   
   through the BS that is pseudo-utopian farm community institutions.  Because   
   most white mothers can’t see through it at all, and they put their   
   developmentally disabled children there, whether as children or as adults, and   
   they don’t see the awfulness at all.  And even those of us with   
   developmental disabilities… we feel the awfulness, we feel its effects in our   
   soul, but we don’t necessarily register that something is going horribly   
   wrong, and we can’t necessarily say anything about it, we may even fight to   
   stay in such places.  So anyone who can see through it, for any reason at all,   
   that is a really important thing.  And it’s also really important that the   
   white people who usually make these communities have overlooked how such an   
   institution looks to someone with a family history of slavery.   
   (via youneedacat)   
      
   -=-=-=-=-=-=-   
      
   Finally, what I had to say about the subject, from personal experience being   
   adopted:   
      
   Yay, I've got something new to write about.   
      
   I'm the white child of a white biological family.  Let me be a little bit more   
   specific; a very intelligent white biological family.  My bio-mom is now a   
   published author (guess that explains why I like to write so much).  She's   
   wicked intelligent, but a year before I was born (a little more, actually, but   
   I don't know the exact amount), she was in a car accident which crushed over   
   1/3 of her spine and caused her total amnesia for everything before that point.   
      
    She's still got mobility, amazingly enough, but she has a horrific amount of   
   chronic pain.  She's totally off of the painkillers, though.  I admire her   
   more than I can say.   
      
   When I was born, she ended up offering me for adoption.  She was going to keep   
   me, but as I grew closer to birth, she started wondering what kind of life she   
   would have to offer me.  It's a good question, too.  She was totally and   
   completely alone.  In a way that you and I can't truly comprehend.  Her   
   mother and father came in after she came out of her coma, and she had no idea   
   who they were.  Nineteen years wiped.  She told me about the time when she   
   was supposed to disrobe for her doctor, while her parents were present, and she   
   wouldn't do it, because they were complete strangers to her.   
      
   To get on with my point, she gave me up for adoption believing that I would   
   have a better life.  Maybe I did, maybe I didn't.  I don't know for sure.   
    What I do know is that I was adopted into a family that was sterile for some   
   goddamned higher-purposed reason.  My adoptive mother cannot do more than   
   remedial addition and subtraction.  My adoptive father was a school teacher,   
   at first, but he was drawn to that for the same reason that police are often   
   drawn to the force.  Control and dominion.   
      
   My adoptive mother needed someone to be controlled by.  She held two jobs in   
   her life.  She needed someone to financially get her by, and someone to make   
   the decisions that she never had the confidence to make on her own.  She tried   
   to sexually proposition me, before I was in the double digits.  They both were   
   members of a doomsday cult based on Judaism.  They wouldn't let me have   
   friends (and there were exactly two that I had in the cult-- not by choice); as   
   I got older they wouldn't let me have a girlfriend.  I got a job and they   
   wouldn't let me buy anything worthwhile, tangible, or anything that had the   
   potential to let me learn responsibility in the increments that most people   
   take for granted.  I quit, of course.  I got kicked out of the cult, on   
   purpose, at sixteen, and they still wouldn't let me have friends, and I had to   
   follow by the cult rules though I wasn't still a member.   
   They put me into my first placement when I was 16 years old.  The reason?   
      
    They had taken us to a family counselor that made a pact for us; if I kept up   
   my grades and responsibilities, they would let me use the phone at night.   
    That lasted precisely 3 days.  My adoptive father wasn't able to sleep.   
      
    Finally he ripped the phone cord out of the wall.  That was my fuck you   
   point.   
      
   I came back, after making friends with all sorts of juvenile delinquents that   
   were ten times worse than me.  At least now I finally had friends!  Not quite   
   the right ones, though.  I partied.  Hard.   
      
   My next placement was less than 2 months later, for totally just ignoring their   
   ridiculous rules.  It lasted a half a year.  More, much worse, friends.   
   Before I turned 18, after I'd finished there, they kicked me out on the   
   streets, which isn't even fucking legal.  I had no place to go but to live   
   with a burglar friend who had forged all of his school records, thus not having   
   to go to school, and having his own trailer.  Bam, opportunities destroyed for   
   my entire life due to a criminal record.  This wasn't enough.  They stole my   
   college fund, too, which had been waiting for me since I was 2.   
      
   My life, up to the point of 30 years old, at least, has been shit.  I'm not   
   going to point any fingers, but I didn't have any decent role models to learn   
   from.  My biological mother beats herself up, to this day, regarding all of   
   this.  She hates my adoptive mother (my adoptive father died awhile back).   
      
    My adoptive mother has now stolen well over $20,000 dollars from me;   
   heirlooms and valuables left to me by my adoptive father, and has sold off the   
   greater parts of what I owned prior to this last relocation.   
   What did it teach me?  Sometimes love can be worse than hate.  They thought   
   they were doing the right thing, but there was no intelligence behind that.   
      
    They had no idea how to press me towards my potential.  They had to have   
   order imposed upon them by a cult, in order to make life worth living.  They   
   should have been given an aptitude test; intelligence, tolerance, and other   
   issues should have been tested.   
      
   You want to know how well my adoptive dad was at 'teaching' his family?  He   
   force fed my adoptive mother liver, because it was a 'blood builder', until she   
   vomited at the dinner table.  He did the same with me with overcooked, canned   
   asparagus; it was gel by the time I ate it.  I was maybe 6, if I was lucky.   
      
   I'm considering suing the adoption agency, but I've got no resources.  The   
   only time I had resources is when I got out of the Army, and all of them went   
   to saving my son from an abusive mother.  I only identify with broken people,   
   most of the time, and I hang out for too long in relationships where I'm the   
   one that gets taken advantage of and abused, because I'm so desperate for the   
   acceptance and caring that I've so rarely felt in life.   
      
   When I saved my son, he saved me.  I wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for   
   him.  Only through his unconditional love, and the responsibilities that   
   suddenly seemed worthwhile (since I obviously wasn't worth the trouble or   
   effort); he was lost without me.   
      
   My life is still buried in oversensitive pain, because of how I was raised.   
      
    I'd take slavery on a farm over it, maybe, but I have never experienced that   
   first hand.  At least I would've learned the value of work, and a work ethic,   
   instead of being ignored in the corner, while my OCD mom with serious mental   
   problems stood at the kitchen window over a sink of cooling dishwater, and   
   cried for hours on end.  She was hallucinating Satan, but couldn't get out to   
   see a doctor because of cult rules.  My father came home and spanked the   
   everloving fuck out of me.  She tried it a few times, too.  Usually with   
   implements.   
      
   Don't trust adoption agencies.  Don't do closed adoptions.  Screen your   
   candidates yourself.  They just need to place babies, and get bonuses for each   
   one that they place above the institution's average.   
   Adoption is necessary, but certainly not always the dream life that a parent   
   can't offer his or her children.   
      
   Good job, mother of the son with Down's Syndrome.  My heart goes out to you.   
      
   -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-   
      
   If this can help even one person avoid some pain, or even find a kindred spirit   
   to banish the loneliness for a bit, I will certainly consider it time well   
   spent.   
    -=-   
      
   "It is no measure of good health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick   
   society." -- Jiddu Krishnamurti   
   --- SBBSecho 2.26-OpenBSD   
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