Michelle
Hostess with the Mostest
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« on: April 28, 2007, 05:29:07 am » |
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Hi MR,
I was adopted at age ten, but had been with my a-family since the age of two. (Was a Crown Ward, so I was owned by the state (but my mother lived only five miles away).
When a-parents registered me in school, it was under their name - they didn't want me to be teased or whatever because I had a different last name. That was in the '60s, though....and things have changed a great deal since then. If I needed medical treatment, they registered me in my real name. They only adopted me because it was easier to travel and thought I would have less problems getting a passport and other documents as I got older, and beccause I was born in the US, but was living in Canada, they also made me a Canadian citizen at the same time they adopted me...giving me their last name seemed, at the time, a way to make things simpler.
My a-parents had no idea though when the adoption was finalized that my birth certificate would be sealed and I wouldn't have access to it. In fact, just last month I told my a-mother that Illinois (where I was born) won't give me my birth certificate (even tho I was adopted in Ontario) and she didn't believe me lol
Be careful, too, with the word abandoned. Orphanages and adoption agencies may tell people that a child has been abandoned (look at the recent adoption by serial adopter Angeline Jolie with the boy from Vietnam....the mother and family came forward after hearing about the adoption, but Jolie said, or was told the child was abandoned). It's good to demand the orphanage give any info they have, and if the child does have her/his family name, then try and locate the family first and see what their circumstances are since the child was placed or taken. I worked in an orphanage in Romania in 2001, and I asked the director about the children's families....she said it was really rare to have a child that had been left with no name or information....it did happen, but not often. Maybe in other countries it's more common, but there it wasn't.
Abandoned is not a good word, either; I imagine a mother and/or family being in such a bad state that leaving their child anonymously was what they thought was their only option at that time. We don't know their circumstances and abandoned sounds like the mother just didn't want the child, period, then or ever. Sometimes the father or the mother's parents take the child and leave it at an orphanage, when that's not what the mother wanted. Maybe it's me, but I don't believe that a mother who leaves a child anonymously, does so because she doesn't care....it's done more out of fear and desperation. The system of adoption is so crooked that I think the first story one hears about a child is usually not the truth. We just have to look at adoption in North America to know how corrupt it is and that it's based on lies and myths.
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