​Hi everyone, welcome back to ‘Blogville’. I woke up this morning at my usual time and wondered if there was a storm outside. It was dull, more like early evening when just days ago the morning sunlight found the careless cracks in the curtains and yelled at me that it was morning. I should have seen it coming when more and more leaves crunched under my feet after having put on their glorious bright wardrobe before they fell. Oh no, it looks like fall is actually here!

For some strange reason the brightly coloured leaves  prompt me to think of orphans in Hollywood movies. You well know the classic movies featuring orphanages where they dress the children up and put them on display for potential adoptive parents, hoping they might pick one of the children to bring home. In the movies, staff members  washed and dressed the children up to make them seem happy and well cared for, when their reality was the trauma of not having parents to love and care for them. Those movies made audiences feel so happy for the chosen children even though they had no idea what that child’s future life might actually look like. Instead, they just assume that it must be a better future than that drab orphanage had to offer. I find some irony in the fact that the magnificent and colourful falling of leaves from their tree branches is called ‘abscission’, so close to the word ‘adoption’. 

It is true! According to my web search “When temperatures drop below freezing, the abscission layer hardens more rapidly, cutting off the leaf's connection to the tree.” (Jim Leser Cedaredge Tree Board 2019.)
That quote somehow not only reminds me of children awaiting adoption, but it also reminds me of the treatment of birth mothers, especially in the 1950s and 1960s. 

Like the colourful fall leaves on the trees, many birth mothers may have been once warmly admired and even envied by their community for who they were, maybe their beauty, or their talents, perhaps even envying their bright futures. But when those same youthful girls or women found themselves unmarried and pregnant, the temperature dropped and often they began feeling a distinct separation from their community. Many found themselves abandoned by their own families, by the birth fathers, and by the birth fathers’ families, talk about a temperature drop. The once beautiful leaf admired by many, suddenly dropped to the ground, often walked on, and then disappearing from the community.

I am reminded of what the first frost does to the leaves when the abscission layer separates the leaf from the tree. Suddenly, like those leaves, the birth mother finds herself separated from her support system; the birth father, her friends, family, and community. These women, like fall leaves, are suddenly transitioned from the spectacular autumn colour show to an irritating pile of leaves needing to be removed from the lawn, or left untended to be buried under the snow. So, like the fall leaves, a birth mother is either removed from her community to a home for unwed mothers, a far away relative, or remains at home where she is buried by a thick layer of shame in her community. Of note, birth mothers were often referred to as ‘fallen women’.

The truth is that each of us likely has a birth mother in our family tree, though perhaps on a slightly less colourful branch. A branch hidden deep within the tree. In addition to the unfortunately typical reactions to unplanned pregnancies, such as families shipping birth mothers off, or communities shaming them, there were a couple of other options. For example, in the past, many couples who found themselves expecting an unplanned child were hurriedly married before the pregnancy became obvious; noting the many ‘premature’ births in those days. Somehow, if the birth mother married, her unexpected or unplanned pregnancy did not impact on her reputation, as if marriage removed the tarnish. It would appear that nuptials, entered into voluntarily or not,  magically negated the community’s view of pre-marital sex. 

If a quick wedding was not an option, many families created cover stories. A common cover story was where the actual birth mother became ‘sick’ or she was ‘needed at home’ and her own mother would then pretend to be expecting a child. This resulted in grandmothers raising their grandchildren as their own birth children, while the true birth mother was demoted to the role of sibling. Family birth records and government registries are filled with altered birth certificates and claims of premature births; which reminds me of those earlier mentioned layers of fallen leaves whose colour has faded and they have been buried by the heavy burden of snow.

I feel that the role of the birth father was kind of like the role of chlorophyll as it relates tree leaves. While dating the birth mother, the birth father expended a lot of positive energy, therefore creating a sweetness to the relationship.  Like the change in seasons, an unexpected pregnancy often created a drop in temperature and reduced the ‘chlorophyll in the leaves’, so the relationship’s sweetness often started to break down. Finally, though there may not be any obvious signs that chlorophyll once played such an important role, it is clear to all what the leaves have been up to. A significant difference is that while the chlorophyll simply goes temporarily dormant, the brightly coloured leaf is completely removed from the tree. 

It is important to note that many birth fathers were never made aware of the pregnancy, therefore not being given a chance to plan for their own infant. In many instances, society and the birth parents’ families often took over the decision making without offering options to, or considering the wishes of, the birth parents. To me, the difference is the unequal burden of responsibility on the birth mother as compared to the birth father, when both were equally involved in the conception. I would like to think that, if given the opportunity, many birth fathers and/or their families would have taken responsibility and raised those unexpected babies. I suppose we will never really know.  

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Hello Blogville friends! Welcome back, it is so nice to see you. This morning I am drinking a decaffeinated 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. I write these blogs in the hopes that anyone else feeling what I feel will know that they are not alone, that they belong to a community of adopted people who feel like this too. Not all adopted people will relate to my blogs as our experiences are unique but I continue writing for those who do.


When I hear my son and daughter-in-law call my toddler grandson’s name I realize that it is not just his name, it is his identity to them, and to him. When they say his name they instantly remember the first time they saw him and held him, his first laugh, his first steps, and all his milestones. His name conjures up instant identity of him as their precious son. This applies to all of my grandchildren and their parents. Even sometimes when I call my own adult children by their names the same thing happens. I associate their personalities, their traits, and their unique characteristics with their names. Your name forms a big part of your identity, for you and for your family.


For my first 9 months of life, while I waited for a family of my own, I don’t know who, or even if, anyone called me by my original name. As an adult, I learned that my original given names were Yvonne Marie. When I mentioned my original names to her, one of my maternal half-sisters wondered if her/our mother had named me after two of the Dionne Quintuplets (a historical famous multiple birth that took place near Corbeil, Ontario) as birth mother had always been interested in their story. Also historically, many Catholic families used Marie as their child’s middle name. So it may have been a default given the home for unwed mothers my birth mother attended was operated by Catholic nuns.


I often wonder if the nurses who cared for me following my birth used my original name when trying to comfort me? It was weeks after my birth mother me left me behind at the ‘home for unwed mothers’ before a Children’s Aid worker finally came to get me, so I assume (hopefully) that the nurses called me something during that time while they cared for me. I can only hope that they smiled at me, held me, and interacted with me given that they were my only connection to humanity. I hope they used my name.


When, as an adult, I had the good fortune of meeting one of my former foster mothers, actually the last one before my adoption probation placement. When she opened her door she opened her arms and uttered, “my Marie”. My heart warmed in that moment. I’m not sure who dropped the Yvonne or when; adding to the list of things I’ll never know, but I cannot describe what it meant to me to know that she had called me by one of my original names during my time with her and her family. Referring to me by one of my original names made me a person, not simply an unwanted infant. It made me ‘someone’, not a something. 


Upon placement with my new family, my adoptive parents changed my name as was customary back then. They did not realize that it was essentially wiping out my first identity, they were simply claiming me as their own. To be fair my birth first name didn’t really go with my new surname. Also indicating that the name change was part of their claiming of me, I was named after the back half of my maternal grandmother’s name (she was Magdalene, pronounced ‘Magda-Lyn’). She was just Granny to me and her friends called her Maggie so I never really made the connection until one day when I asked my mom if I came to them already named, and if not, why she named me Lynn. I really loved my granny so I was honoured to have been sort of named after her. It made me feel, connected.


As you may be aware from other blogs, I required surgery upon placement with my parents. I feel a little sorry for baby me, in pain in a strange environment with a virtual stranger trying to comfort and care for me while likely calling me by my new name. I was not yet accustomed to my new name, nor likely comforted by hearing it. I don’t fault my mom for that, she was just so excited to have me as her daughter. No one talked about transitions, claiming, or attachment in those days. There was no training for pre-adoptive parents back then. My poor mom was winging it. I appreciate that she was doing her best, while also acknowledging the confusion baby me must have felt.


One day, when I was snooping in some of my parents’ papers I found my Adoption Order. I cannot describe how it felt when I discovered that my mom had carefully cut out my given names from the adoption papers. Once again, I felt erased. I could not imagine what it would hurt to have told me what I was named at birth. Mom always claimed she could not remember what my name had been before I came to them. As a result, I never knew my given birth names until way into adulthood when legislation changed and adopted folks started to be given some rights to information. When I learned my given names, it made me feel acknowledged, that I actually had existed before I was nine months old, that I was someone before I was even placed with my new family.


Years later, when I was an adoption worker, I was working with a birth mom who had made an adoption plan for her baby. When the baby girl was born, her birth mother did not want to name her as she felt it was the adoptive parents’ right to choose her name. While I agreed that her adoptive parents would likely change the baby’s name, I asked her if she would always want to think of her birth daughter as simply ‘baby girl’? I also asked her, if the day ever came that they might meet, wouldn’t she want to call her by a name she had given her? After thinking all of this over, she decided to give her baby a name. 


So when I think about my names, I think about the identities I have had for the people who gave them to me, or associated them with me, and realize that names are really part of the attachment process. We know that attachment can be short or long term depending on the circumstances, but calling someone by name makes them real, makes them a person, rather than a job or a commodity. When, or if, people think of me by whatever name they associate with me, my identity when they knew me, I am simply grateful and honoured to be remembered. 


Thank you so much for visiting with me today. I so enjoy your company and I hope you enjoy reading about my thoughts. As always, feel free to comment here or for more privacy, send me an e-mail at [email protected]. 
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