Hello Blogville friends! Welcome back, it is so nice to see you. This morning I am drinking a green tea as I write to you. As an adopted person I feel it is important to open up a dialogue about adoption topics (and sometimes other topics too) that impact on so many of us. 

Yesterday marked the day I was born into a world where people can just disappear from the lives of their babies. I apologize to my maternal birth half sisters for how I feel hurt by their mother, the woman who gave birth to them and kept them, perhaps they should stop reading here. I believe my other maternal birth half sister, also abandoned once she was born, will ‘get’ how I felt yesterday. I felt sad. 
Every year I grieve for what newborn me went through. Yesterday was no different. 

I have talked to you about this before. In my family we have a number of birthdays (husband, two daughters) that we gather to celebrate within a couple of weeks of each other and weeks before my date. We celebrate traditionally, dinner, cake, cards and gifts. I love that they can truly celebrate the day they joined, and were welcomed into their families! As I write this we are just coming out of their celebrations, while I was dreading my own. 

People say, forget what happened, we want to celebrate you! But for nine months I was really no one, belonged to no one, abandoned. How can I possibly forget that? September 22nd marks the beginning of my relinquishment and adoption journey.

I feel like developing a line of birthday greeting cards for people who have been adopted or maybe even in foster or kinship care. The cards would say things like:
*We know today might be hard for you but we are celebrating that you are part of our family. 
*I know today brings on hard feelings but I’m happy you are in my life. Celebrating YOU today!
*Its not about how you got here, we are celebrating that you did, and that you are a part of our family! 

The older I got, the more people who do not know my story think my evasiveness or avoidance of my birth date is about my age. I’m proud of my age, 67 years on the planet as of yesterday, because aging is a privilege denied to too many.

As I have previously talked about, I feel that my real life began on June 19, 1959 when I was placed with my parents at 9 months old. That was the day I joined my family, why doesn’t that date count instead?

As I’ve said before, when I suggested that our family celebrate my ‘birthday’ on June 19th each year my mom simply said, “You just want two birthdays.” In her defence, there was little to no training for adoptive parents back then. Also, the fact that my dad was usually gone hunting on my September birth date solidified that my actual birth date really meant nothing. 

Thankfully, today many adoptive families do celebrate the anniversary of the day the child joined their family, sometimes called ‘Gotcha Day’ ‘Family Day’ or ‘Welcoming Day’. 

Just to complicate even that scenario, infants, children, youth are all placed with their prospective adoptive parents on an ‘adoption probation’ period. It will be months before they are legally adopted. So, which date does the family celebrate, the placement date or the finalization date?

I remember something about a young girl that I had placed with a family when I was an adoption worker. That little girl kept a special coloured pen for the day she would sign her legal adoption papers. Now children don’t actually sign the legal adoption papers, or adoption order, a Judge does that. However, after a little chat with the Judge about this young girl’s plan, his clerk had ‘official papers’ for her to co-sign with the empathetic Judge. I can still see the pride on her face as she chose to be legally adopted that day. 

Adoptive parents, when your child is old enough, please consider having a conversation with them about celebrating their birthday and/or the anniversary of them becoming a family member. Trust me when I tell you it is not about having ‘two birthdays’. As adopted people we already feel different, we certainly do not want to stand out even more by having two ‘birthday’ celebrations. 

So I thank my family members and friends for understanding how I feel about ‘celebrating’ the anniversary of the date I was born. I know all of you just want to mark the day and I appreciate it, and your good wishes. However, it remains a date when I mourn for infant me (Yvonne Marie) and for my birth parents. As a result, June 19th will always be my real ‘birth’ date; because it marks the day that Lynn Etmanski was ‘born’.

Thank you for reading. As ever, if you have a comment, please feel free to leave it here. If you wish to comment more privately, please feel free to send me an email [email protected] 
Take good care of yourself and each other. 

Hello Blogville friends! Welcome back, it is so nice to ‘see’ you. This morning I am drinking a hibiscus splash tea as I write to you. As an adopted person I feel it is important to open up a dialogue about adoption topics (and sometimes other topics too) that impact on so many of us. That is why I continue to write to/for you. 


I don’t know what I was dreaming about last night but I had the strangest thought when I awoke this morning. ‘My husband is the only person in the world who specifically chose me.’ Further, despite all my flaws and insecurities, he has committed to that choice for 46 years (so far). Honestly, he is the only one who has chosen to commit to me despite all other options, for better or worse.


I mean, think about it. As an adopted person, my birth mother and all of her extended family members did not choose to keep me. My birth mother decided that my birth father would not be offered the choice to parent me, so he was never told of the pregnancy. Therefore his option to choose to parent me was off the table. As a result of relinquishment at birth, one can feel ‘unkeepable’,  unlovable, unworthy. Certainly not someone worth choosing!


My third foster home tried to choose  to keep me but they were refused the option by the child welfare agency. In truth, even if they had been able to keep me, the reality is that they had not actually chosen me specifically. It would have just been fallout from having cared for me (after two less than caring foster care placements), but at least they had been prepared to commit. 


My mom and dad chose to parent me through adoption. Parenting through adoption was not their first choice though; biology had forced their hand. They also did not choose me specifically, they simply accepted the nine month old baby girl offered over the phone by an adoption worker. It made sense to adopt a little girl as they had adopted a little boy already. So technically, they chose a little girl, not me specifically. Please know that I am not saying that they did not love and care for me deeply as their daughter, because I know they did. I’m just saying they did not choose me specifically.


My brother (through adoption) was just a small child when I arrived, and like most siblings (birth or adopted), he had no real say in the matter. No real choice. I feel that siblings through adoption are not much, if at all, different than birth siblings in terms of commitment.


I have always loved the expression, “Friends are family you choose for yourself.” Friendships come and go in one’s lifetime; long term commitment is not a real expectation. Friends choose to hang around with each other while they share commonalities. Friends are usually there to support each other in life’s big events as well as enjoying spending time together simply every day living. So many shared life events. As many of you likely have, I too have had friendships come and go over the years; each ending painful, but not unexpected. I am always aware that I may not be worth keeping. 


Friendships can fall victim to growing up, geography, lifestyles, career choices, misunderstandings, divided loyalties, religion, and even, sadly, politics, to name a few. There are many exceptions thankfully, that allow friendships to weather those storms. Over my lifetime I have lost friends to those storms. Every single one felt like a lifetime commitment, until it wasn’t, and I grieve each loss. As a person who was relinquished at birth, I acknowledge that I must be hard to stay friends with, it’s not them, it’s me.


My children are connected to me really by default, however, having a relationship with me now that they are adults is their choice. Their spouses are connected to me by law, as in mother-in-law. Obviously any of them can choose to spend time with me, or not, but they are my children, or married to my children, and their children are my grandchildren. In that connection, none of them really have a choice. 


So, getting back to my husband, he is the only person in my life who met me, found something special in me, and decided to be with me until one of us is no longer here. Every single day, he chooses to continue to be with me, to put up with my moods, my idiosyncrasies, my lack of self-esteem and confidence, and my fears. He picked me, and he chooses to spend his life with me, for better or worse. Believe me, he has seen me at my worst, but still he loves me, and remains interested in my thoughts and feelings. He stays because he wants to, he chooses me! He is my one and I love him, I choose him back!


Thank you so much for visiting with me today. I so enjoy your company and I hope you find something of value in my thoughts. As always, feel free to comment here or send me an e-mail at [email protected]. Did you know that if you follow me on Goodreads, you will be one of the first to get new blog post notifications? ‘See’ you next time.