​Hello and welcome back to Blogville. It is so nice to see you. This morning I am sipping on a honey mandarine and orange tea as I write to you. This blog is a bit different as I am using a euphemism to tell you about something I recently experienced but prefer to keep the actual details confidential. I mean, I’m a pretty good cook but I would not consider myself a Chef, so right there you know the salad is symbolic.

You know, I used to make fantastic salads. People used to really benefit from my salads and would tell other people about them and that I had made one for them. Sometimes I even made more than one salad for them, or sometimes there was more than one very special ingredient in their salad because the ingredients were much better if they stayed together in the same salad.

I was making great salads when the pandemic hit. I was only able to make a few salads here or there during the pandemic so I decided to retire from making salads. I wrote a book to help people talk about making salads and self-published it, so I focused all my energy on making sure people heard about my salad book, instead of  making salads. 

I believe that what made my salads work were the very special ingredients selected and how the ingredients went together. For example, there were times when the salad was almost made and we realized that the ingredients may have worked when they were freshly combined in the bowl, but as they spent time together one or the other started to wilt. Like me, there are many chefs out there who have experience and expertise in putting ingredients together to make salads work, while their are others who are still learning which ingredients work best when combined. 

Sometimes there was a risk that the new ingredients may negatively impact on the whole salad, so we would take it out. We would place the ingredient back on the shelf, or in the fridge, until there was a new salad that the ingredient may work better with. There was nothing wrong with the ingredient, and there was nothing wrong with the salad, but they just did not work together. It was better to start over than to serve a salad with ingredients that simply did not go together.

There were other times when the salad ingredients complimented each other, and even though a new ingredient began to wilt or to impact somehow on the salad, I just had to tweak it a little. I might consult another chef that had plenty of experience tying salad flavours together in the past and see if they could do the same for this salad. Most of the time that was all that was needed and the salad came together just fine.

I think you should know that, in general, salads are often put together with great care while other times, the ingredients are just thrown together. Most salads out there have ingredients that are matched by nature, without a chef’s help. Some have one main ingredient and others have two main ingredients. When the basic salad is ready, or sometimes even before it is ready, new ingredients are added. Some have only one new ingredient while others have many new ingredients, usually added one at a time, but not always; sometimes multiple ingredients are added all at once. 

I bet that when you saw I was talking about salads you automatically pictured a chef’s salad or a Cesar salad right? There are so many salads out there I cannot even name them all, and many that even I probably have never heard of. So I can only speak about the salads I am aware of, or have played a role in putting the ingredients together. I am not talking about all salads by any means.

When I was just a selected ingredient myself, my own salad was pretty standard. I would describe myself as a pretty average ingredient while the ingredient added before me brought a little spice to the salad, but the Executive Chefs made it work. As a result, our salad worked pretty well overall. As a result of my own salad experience, when I decided to become a sous chef myself I already knew there were many different salads and salad ingredients. 

In my career as a sous chef preparing the salad ingredients, I worked very hard to make sure that the Executive Chefs had everything they needed to bring their salad to success. Most of the time the salads were a hit, but sometimes an ingredient may have needed to be tweaked, or sadly, sometimes even removed and put into a new salad. I took pride in watching my salads come together. 

Recently, I was asked to return to the kitchen. I had not made a new salad in a long while but the idea of creating them again was very enticing and so I said yes. 

However, while I was away from the kitchen, things had really changed. Many sous chefs and  Executive Chefs were new, and there were many more customers asking for salads that required new and often rare ingredients. The kitchen itself had changed and it was hard to find the ingredients I needed to create the best salads. 

Just when I was starting to learn the kitchen changes and find the ingredients I would be needing, I discovered that I was actually hired to make soup and salads. That came as a shock and I knew I could not do it. My specialty had been salads and though soup may have some of the same ingredients, the process is very different. I started exploring the kitchen and learning where the pots were kept and where I could find the basic ingredients for soup. After a short time, I was starting to get accustomed to the new kitchen and kitchen staff, and I was told that I would be waiting tables as well. 

When I said yes to returning to the kitchen I did not realize that it was not just to create my salads, but to make soup and wait tables too. Since returning to the kitchen was something I had wanted to do, but did not need to do, I left. Luckily I really had not started to make any salads yet, I had just made some calls about being able to get the proper ingredients. So, sadly, I went to the Maître D’ and handed in my apron.

Thank you for reading this very different blog today. Life offers many opportunities and challenges. I believe that people should strive to try new things and even retry old things, with or without success, so that they don’t look back and wonder if they ‘should have’. Every life experience teaches lessons we can learn and benefit from. If you care to comment, you may do so here or by reaching out to me at [email protected]

Hello everyone, welcome back to Blogville. Today I am sipping on an English Breakfast tea as I write to you. It’s funny how I will just be sitting somewhere, minding my own business, when a random thought will enter my mind. For example, I was sitting in the living room this morning when suddenly I wondered, ‘Was I more unexpected than unwanted by my birth mother?” 

Clearly, in the late 1950’s unwed women did not typically plan to become pregnant. It follows then, that I was definitely unexpected. However, my mom and dad’s infertility was also definitely unexpected. Both unexpected events brought some form of grief. I can only assume that my birth mother must have grieved having to go through a second pregnancy and relinquishment of a baby, while I know for a fact that my parents grieved their inability to create a baby and carry it to term. Both scenarios resulted in unexpected involvements with the adoption system. 

I am also quite sure that my birth mother did not expect to find herself pregnant ‘out of wedlock’ for a second time in her young life. I doubt that she expected to find herself subsequently admitted to a home for unwed mothers to be hidden away awaiting my birth. She did not find herself unexpectedly abandoned by my birth father, it was her choice not to tell him of the pregnancy. 

My birth father subsequently received an unexpected call about my existence about 40 years after he had had a brief relationship with my birth mother. Quite unexpectedly, my birth father told the government worker who had contacted him that he was in agreement to speak with me. Now THAT was unexpected. I was pretty sure he would hear the worker out and then deny ever having known my birth mother.

My birth father and his work colleagues of the time had a little tradition. The single men would lend their names to the married men for their ‘romantic trysts’ when working in small communities. As he had misunderstood where I had been conceived he agreed to speak with me to help figure out who my birth father was. At one point in our conversation it occurred to him that it was actually him who had dated my birth mother. Clearly, that was an unexpected realization. He immediately and wholeheartedly accepted me as his birth child, an act I never expected. 

Acceptance by my birth father was never something I expected when I reached adulthood; but then, being rejected as an adult by my birth mother was also quite a surprise. I think I somewhat understood her decision to relinquish her rights to parent me when I was an infant, but I don’t think I ever really understood her not wanting to meet me when we were both adults. Her rejection of me a second time was truly unexpected.

I grew up knowing that my birth mother had had another baby before me. My mom was under the impression that my birth mother had given birth to a little boy and that he had been kept by the birth family who acted as though he had been born to my birth mother’s own parents. I believed my birth brother was being raised as my ‘uncle’ in my maternal family of origin. Therefore, when the adoption disclosure laws changed somewhere around 1989 I started looking for my older 1/2 brother something unexpected happened. 

In 1990 I received a call from a government worker letting me know that my birth mother had actually given birth to a baby girl in1955 and that baby girl was also placed on adoption. Well, that was really an unexpected surprise. Apparently the birth mother and her own mother had given birth fairly close to each other; my birth grandmother had actually had a baby boy, while my birth mother gave birth to a baby girl in close proximity to each other. 

When I told her about it, my mom was surprised to learn that I had a birth 1/2 sister and not a 1/2 brother. This news was completely unexpected. My birth 1/2 sister and I were born almost to the day three years apart. Did I mention that her name is also Lynne (but spelled with an ‘e’)? That was also unexpected.

Again, as the adoption laws changed, Lynne and I gained the right to have our birth mother contacted on our behalf. Independent of each other, Lynne and I spoke with the government worker assigned to us and let her know of our wish to be in contact with our birth mother. Lynne and I had both indicated that we would be willing to meet her privately and not to interfere with her relationship with her adult children. Many birth mothers are afraid of what their ‘kept’ children will think of them when they learn about their mothers’ having had babies before them. Despite our assurances, our birth mother declined to meet us; that was unexpected. 

At our request, she did provide a photograph of herself around the age she was when she had given birth to us, and she gave the worker a medical history update for us. Together with these things she also included a generic greeting card indicating that she cared about us; that was unexpected. 

In my experience, many children who have been adopted make up fantasy birth parents. This is especially true of children who were not provided with much, if any, social history information. 

There is a small part of me that understands adoptive parents making up fantasy stories for their children in the sad belief that this would help their child or children. Therefore, is it so unexpected that children create visions of perfect birth parents who had no choice but to relinquish their parental rights? Often misinformation caused (or causes) a false perception of their birth story, rendering them inconsolable when they learn their unexpected birth story truths. I firmly believe that age-appropriate, true birth history information sharing will actually protect your child.  

Adoption is very different today, thankfully, but there are many shameful historical ‘adoption’ acts such as the 60s Scoop; Irish Famine Orphans; and the American Orphan Trains (to name a few). Learning how these ‘orphans’ were put up on platforms where they could be poked and prodded like cattle was painful for me as an adopted person; as was the fact that siblings were usually separated, never to see each other again. As awful as it was to learn about them, the fact that these orphan trains actually existed until the1920s was unexpected. 

So, all this to say that I firmly believe that a child’s actual birth history should never be made up. Details can be mitigated age-appropriately but the basic story should be true. If you tell your child their whole life that their birth parents sought an adoption plan because they were a young college couple who found themselves pregnant but not ready to be parents, you have set them all up. Imagine how unexpected their true story might be when your child learns it? 

When parents try to protect their adopted children like this, it often causes their children to wonder about other ‘truths’ you have told them over their lifetimes so far. Was it the truth when you said they were smart, or funny, or that you loved them? Their adoption truth, (perhaps mitigated age-appropriately) when they learn it, should never have been complete fantasy. That will make their truth completely unexpected.

Thank you for reading my blogs. I am likely going to be reducing my posts to monthly instead of bi-weekly as I have taken on a short-term work commitment. When that contract is completed I will decide whether monthly works or if I should resume bi-weekly posts. If any of you have any thoughts on this change, please feel free to reach out to me at [email protected] 

Hello Blogville friends! Welcome back, it is so nice to see you. This morning I am drinking a green tea with lemon. I added a bit of honey in order to sweeten my tea as I write to birth parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and even cousins on behalf of adopted people who are about to turn 18. If you know anyone who fits into any of those categories, please share this blog with them.

In Ontario, and several other Canadian provinces, at 18 years of age an adopted person has some rights to ‘sealed’ file information, and opportunities to seek out birth relatives. I’m not sure what the rules are where you live but if you fit any role in the ones I mentioned earlier, you might want to check out what happens when children who were placed for adoption become legal adults; and if you can connect with them.

For birth parents, especially birth mothers as they definitely know about their birth children’s existence, this is your chance to update your birth child about who you are today. If they are seeking information this is your chance to tell them about who you are now. They are now old enough to be provided file information from when you relinquished your legal right to parent them. I always hope that their adoptive parents have been providing these details as the child was growing up so they ‘know’ you a little. However, we must remember that the adoptive parents may not have been given adequate information, and sadly, may even have been given some incorrect information that they have innocently shared with your birth child. 

Even if your birth child has been given some details about you as they were growing up, typically people have changed in 18 years or so. I am pretty sure you are living a different life today than you were back then. I am not sure if you are aware, but you can write an updated letter and submit it to the agency, lawyer, or private practitioner, that handled the adoption. This is where your birth child with start their search if and when they decide to do so. If they do approach the agency, or agent who handled the adoption, they will be provided the original details as well as any updated information you have provided. I only wish that I could only fully express what a gift a letter of update would be for your now adult birth child. 

From the original file, your birth child would likely have been provided some minimal information (mostly medical history in my experience) about you and maybe even your extended family members. As a birth parent, you might have provided your worker with some idea of the roles your parents and other extended family members played in why you made an adoption plan for your birth child, which would be shared with them in a file disclosure. In your letter, it will be relevant to let your birth child know how birth relatives have coped with your decision (supportive, ignored it, etc.) over the years, and if in fact, they are still living. You are likely able to provide a more complete medical history on the health of your extended family members as at least 18 years have passed since you first provided information to an adoption worker or adoption agency representative.

If possible, a further ‘gift’ would be to provide updated information about the birth father. We all know that sometimes birth mothers did not give any information on the biological father for many reasons. In some cases for example, the pregnancy occurred as a result of an involuntary scenario and you truly could not provide any details about him. Your adult birth child will appreciate knowing that you actually cannot provide any information as opposed to not wanting to provide it. In other scenarios you may wish to continue to protect the identity of the birth father for your own reasons but you have likely kept up with where and what he is doing today, or can find out. Without revealing his identity there may still be some information you can provide such as physical characteristics, any medial information he may have disclosed during your relationship, as well as type of employment, interests, talents, sense of humour and other traits you may have noticed. Perhaps you know if he has had any other children, these would be your birth child’s half-siblings. This person is responsible for half of who your shared birth child is. If you are simply not wanting him to know about his adult child, you must think about the fact that you are purposely withholding information from someone who did not ask to be conceived and was then made to lead a life full of unanswered questions. 

Your birth child will want to know if they have any siblings that you, or their birth father, may have had. Their original social and medical history will have told them of any siblings born prior to them, but then sibling information simply ends at thee time of their birth as a result of the file closure. If your birth child has been aware of the existence of any older birth siblings they will have had some time to prepare and adjust to that idea. When your birth child learns of any birth siblings born to you or their birth father after them, this may be a bigger adjustment. For some it might mean to them that they were left behind and then replaced. They will need time to consider this huge piece of information, and may even seek counselling to work through their feelings. For others, they may seek an adult relationship with siblings recognizing that all of them were ‘innocent’ in their separation from each other. Some may also have been raised as only children and relish having siblings, or not. The bottom line is that they are siblings, half or full, who share at least one biological parent and a genetic link with each other. In my experience, birth children simply have not thought about their parents having relationships with other people before they created the family they are a part of today. Personally, I have yet to meet a sibling who resents or is threatened by the child placed for adoption. 

I know that this has been a hard blog to read if you are a birth parent, it has been a hard blog to write as an adopted person. As you know, having read previous blogs, I have met my older half sibling that I was separated from due to adoption practices of the time. I met my birth father and his other children (my paternal half-siblings). My birth mother declined the opportunity to meet with my birth half-sister and I, but following her passing, we met her other children (my maternal half-siblings). My relationships with my birth father before he passed, and with my paternal and maternal birth siblings are nothing short of ‘normal’. We get together when we can, we joke and have fun with each other, we dine out together, just like ‘normal’ siblings might. Some of us are closer with each other than others, just like ‘normal’ siblings. We can provide each other with medical information, historical and ongoing, to keep each other healthy, just like ‘normal siblings’ might. 

As I said at the beginning of this blog, if you cannot bring yourself to put your name out there (where it is a legalized process) then please give your birth child the gift of information. Information that only their birth parent(s) can provide. Write a letter, or letters, to update your birth child, and then find out where you can leave the updated information for them. You likely chose an adoption plan to keep your birth child ‘safe’ or ‘better cared for’ because you truly did not feel that you could manage. They may be adults now, but they still need you, in the form of medical history; yours, your family’s, and if possible, the birth father and his family’s information. Be there for them today in a way you could not be there in the past. Who knows, this might even bring you closure, and peace.
Thank you so much for visiting with me today. I honestly hope I have given you something to think about, and perhaps, even to take action. As always, feel free to comment here or send me an e-mail at [email protected]. To be notified of new blog posts, so you can stay up to date, please follow me on Goodreads. Simply go to: www.goodreads.com Lynn Deiulis’s Blogs, and start following.

‘See’ you next time. 

​My cinnamon cardamom tea is hot and soothing as I try to put these words out into the universe. Welcome, and thank you for always coming back to Blogville to see what I’m rambling about! 

This particular blog is about the impact adoption had, and still has on me. It also deals with my thoughts for adoptive and kinship parents that I share in the hope that it might help them manage the loss(es) their children might be feeling.

I found love with my adoptive parents. They both loved me, and I loved them until their last breaths. I am content knowing that my birth parents were able to move on and find love with their respective partners, and that their legitimate children loved them until my birth parents took their last breaths. 

After a few false starts, including having been neglected in foster homes, I found love in the last foster family I was placed with before I was adopted. They loved me for seven months and then had to ‘pass the baton’ to my mom and dad. We never saw each other again. Well, not until I found my foster mom when I was in my 60s and she in her 80s. Sadly my foster dad had already taken his last breath. Those foster parents were the first people to love me.

But before I knew love, I experienced multiple abandonments and losses. Relinquishment abandonment by birth parents has an impact (conscious or subconscious) on an abandoned baby, child, or youth. That trauma remains throughout their lives. Their feelings of abandonment and loss impacts their future relationships in a big way. 

For me, I feel that there is a ‘grown up me’ reaction and a ‘child me’ reaction to what I perceive as rejection. There are days when I decide to call a friend and when they don’t answer I immediately wonder if they are screening their calls to avoid me. There are times when I suggest a plan and if my friends are ‘not available’ (that is legitimately how I feel- ‘not available’ in air quotes) I wonder what is more important than me and usually decide, ‘anything’.

Sadly, I sometimes feel this way with my adult children too. I’ve learned a trick with my kids though; I just offer to watch my grandchildren or my grand-dog for them! They feel obligated to visit a little when they pick up! I’m just kidding, I love spending time with my grandkids and enjoy the calming feeling of my grand-dog sleeping by my legs on the recliner. My hubby and I also host Sunday dinner weekly, mostly so I can see the ones who live nearby face to face. Face time has been an amazing way to watch my far away grandson grow and develop. 

I find that I often internalize it when a plan changes or my phone call goes unanswered. Immediately I feel that whomever I was reaching out to  probably didn’t really want to go with me or hear from me in the first place. After all, my first parents didn’t want me, so why should my friends? There is a scar of insecurity on my heart that will never go away. When I hear from a friend or one of my adult kids that they did something I liked without me, or went somewhere I wanted to go without me, I am not surprised that I was left out, abandonment is familiar to me, but I still find it emotionally painful. 

So, literally as I was writing this blog, one of my birth half-sisters posted some old (birth) family photos on Facebook. There are no words to describe how abandoned I felt, but at the same time how curious I was as I searched those faces for familiarity. If I find it, when I see that I look a little like that person, or that I’m built a bit like that person, I feel both grateful and lost at the same time. I also feel disloyal to my parents.

I share all of this as my way of trying to help other adopted folks and their families navigate and maybe even mitigate the relinquishment trauma. At the same time I try to help families formed through adoption. Your children love you, but they are also curious about their birth families in an effort to understand, and to mitigate their trauma. 

If you have pictures of your child’s birth family, share them from the beginning, there is no magic age for your child to see who they might look like. If you have stories or information about your child’s birth family, share it when it is developmentally  appropriate; check with a therapist or professional if you are not sure how or what to share. Your children are curious and need to know that you are okay with their questions.

Children deserve to know that their need for an adoption plan was about adult choices, not about anything that they did or didn’t do. They need to know that sometimes children are simply left out of their birth parents’ life plans and it isn’t anything they did or didn’t do. Children need life’s rejections to be normalized so they do not personalize them. 

Please know that when your adopted child asks questions, the questions are about them, not about their relationship with you. Their questions are about where they came from and not related to their life with you, or their love for you.

Your children are trying to understand who they are and why they are different from other kids. If your child used a walker, or had an artificial limb, or was the only one in your family who could  sing, or wore glasses, you would expect questions right? They are not questioning your love for them, they are just trying to understand how they became part of your family, and sometimes why they needed a new family. Who better to explain all of this to them than their REAL parents? Who better to help prepare them for society’s questions about their birth parents than their REAL parents? 

When I was young my parents might have been better off worrying about what I was thinking, and feeling, about having been adopted, rather than worrying about having the ‘right’ answers. I simply wanted my REAL parents to share what they knew about my birth parents, and where I had come from; to share my truth with me. 

Thanks for visiting today. As always you are welcome to share your comments with me here or by sending me an email at [email protected]
See you next time!