adoption search

Waterloo Two, Where are you? Canadian family searches for siblings

/ V.L. Brunskill / 3 Comments

Adoption find community, let’s help this Canadian family complete their sibling circle.

Five children were relinquished by birth mother Marlene Walsh. Three of five Walsh siblings have been reunited after being adopted by three different families.  Marlene Walsh is deceased.

Correction just in from Jennifer Rosati- “There are 7 of us siblings in total from Marlene. 4 adopted – and 3 raised by their birth fathers.
5 of us are together, and we are now looking for the last two.”

The trio now seek to complete their sibling quintet in time for an August 2013 family reunion. The sisters are on the hunt for the missing Waterloo Two, who according to birth sister Jennifer Rosati- “were born in the Waterloo area — a girl born around 1987 and a boy in 1989 — to Marlene Walsh and a man with the last name of Ellis.” Waterloo is a small city in Southern Ontario, Canada.

As reported  by  The Record  the two missing siblings, “were adopted by the same parents and their adopted father was a professor at a local university. The couple fostered the children before adopting them.” 

The sisters have registered with the  Canadian Reunion Registry. However, as anyone who has used an adoption reunion registry will attest, that route could take years.

To learn more about the Walsh sisters’ search or to get in touch with the siblings, visit their Facebook page, “Need Help Finding the Rest of Our Birth Siblings in Kitchener-Waterloo.”

Blessings for a speedy Waterloo reunion,
Vicki-lynn

P.S  This song keeps popping into my head as I write about the Walsh family.

Will the circle be unbroken?
I went back home, my home was lonesome
Missed my mother, she was gone
All of my brothers, sisters crying
What a home so sad and lone

Will the circle be unbroken
By and by, Lord, by and by

Help pass NY Adoption Legislation for Adoptee Access to Birth Records

/ V.L. Brunskill / 1 Comment

NEWS10 ABC reported yesterday on Legislation that would give adoptees access to birth records. What a wonderful way to head into Mother’s Day weekend!

However, we can’t sit back and celebrate just yet. The New York Statewide Adoption Reform Unsealed Initiative needs your help to make sure this life-altering Adoption legislation passes the Senate.  Call your friends, share and please do whatever you can to make equal access the law in New York.

Below are details from the New York Statewide Adoption Reform Unsealed Initiative  site explaining what you can do right now.New York unsealed initiative

“Contact your legislators in their District Offices. To learn who your state assembly member and senator are, call the Albany switchboard at: 518 455-4218. The phone number in New York City for the League of Women Voters is (212) 725-3541. There are 150 assembly members and the link to the assembly website is http://assembly.state.ny.us
There are 62 state senators. One way to find out who your senator is is by logging on to the senate site, www.senate.state.ny.us
We now have 75 assembly sponsors. Although we have 16 in the senate, we are very hopeful for the future. With more interest and more of us committed to lobby in Albany next session, we are determined to win.
 
A written letter (snail mail) is of more importance with many legislators. However, some value emails. If your email does not get through, go to SEARCH and type in the name of the legislator for access to their website, as many have their own sites. Then send an email from the site. Be sure to include your address and phone number in your mail.A new law recently signed by Governor Cuomo extends participation in the adoption registry to include adult adoptees born in other states but adopted in New York. At last they can obtain non-identifying information from the registry the same as adult adoptees born in the state.”

Let’s go New York adoption triad members!
Let’s get this long overdue legislation passed!

Blessings for making the dream of equal access a reality,

Vicki-lynn

Why the Unknown will Never be Enough for Adoptees

/ V.L. Brunskill / 2 Comments

When my plane touched down in Newfoundland, Canada in 1991, I was welcomed by a hundred people from the tiny fishing village where my birth mother was raised. Hundreds of eyes stared when I reached the stairway leading to the airport exit. Hand in hand with my birth mother, I looked over their recognizable faces. So many of their features were familiar, yet we were strangers. They were fascinated, awestruck and shocked at the family resemblance.  I was a lost member of the tribe, home at last.

To finally touch the ground of your ancestors is healing. To stand before the graves of your great grandparents completes the circle of life. To learn fly fishing from your grandfather whose prominent nose you inherited, and look into the laughing brown eyes of your grandmother is a priceless joy.

My blood heritage turned a transparent, haphazardly sketched self-portrait into a bold, permanent masterpiece.

This morning, I read a piece by blogger Deanna Doss Shrodes. Adoptee Restoration: Adoptees: Why Can’t You Just Be Okay With the Unknown?.
In this heartfelt post, Deanna talks about answering yearly medical questions when you are an adoptee.  In discussing the  frustration of not knowing your medical background, Deana writes, “You don’t know what it’s like to not have something until you’ve been without it. My friend Laura Dennis says it’s like trying to explain what it’s like to starve to a person who has always had food. ”

That statement reminded me of my first visit to Newfoundland and of standing on the foundation of the first house my ancestors built on the rock. The house was taken long ago by the harsh winhomed and salt air of the bluff. I stood at the center of the rough stone foundation, built by a relative from Wales who’d braved an Atlantic crossing as cabin boy. The stones were barely visible beneath the dirt, yet it was mine to know.  I am home. I am found, I thought, sending thanks to a universe that allowed me to find the physical  foundation of my identity.

Months after that trip, I traveled to a different part of Canada to meet more family and attend a wedding. At that wedding I shared with a cousin, the experience of standing on the foundation. I believed that since he was raised by the family and spent many summers in the seaside community, he would have stood amid the blueberry bushes and experienced the overwhelming power of our shared history and belonging.  The history was his to know during all the years I’d yearned to find it. Our foundation was within a few short steps for the non-adopted cousin.

To my surprise, he did not know about the house or the man who built it.  He had been wrapped in a lifetime of knowing and took for granted the history that gave him life.

A heritage that is open and available is easy to ignore.

The non-adopted often ask why we search? Why we need to know?  As Deanna Doss Shrodes blogged, explaining is ” like trying to explain what it’s like to starve to a person who has always had food.”

Blessings for enough information,

Vicki-lynn

Huffington Post: Good News from Adam Pertman on Adoption Rights

/ V.L. Brunskill / Leave a comment

Hooray for the Huffington Post article titled, ‘Equal Rights for All: It’s Finally Time for Adopted People, Too’ by Adam Pertman! Adam is Executive Director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute; and author of ‘Adoption Nation‘ and ‘Adoption by Lesbians and Gay Men‘.

Pertman writes about recent debates over marriage rights for homosexual Americans, and how the fight for equality is much akin to the often ignored rights of adoptees.  Adoptees in nearly every American state are fighting the good fight for equal access to their original birth certificates. Pertman shares good news on this front,  telling us that, “Change is in the air…, and a grassroots adoption-reform movement — akin to the one that led to the marriage-equality cases now before the U.S. Supreme Court — is growing.”

Pertman also takes on the common (and mistaken) belief that open records will result in untold calamities for everyone in the adoption triad. To prove his point, Pertman links to three readily available reports on sealed adoptions and the real-life outcomes of open records legislation.

Pertman writes, “All this information, and far more, is contained in two comprehensive, research-based reports published by the Adoption Institute, “For the Records” and “For the Records II.” Additional information is contained in testimony that I have provided on behalf of the Institute in various states that have considered OBC legislation in recent years, for example in Maryland.”

Equal rights means everyone!  Please don’t miss the article. It is a well-documented look at the issues that define the plight of adult adoptees in America. Bravo Adam, well-done!

Blessing for equal access to your OBC,
Vicki-lynn

Steve Harvey Show – Mara Parker finds Father through AncestryDNA

/ V.L. Brunskill / 1 Comment

Happy Reunion Video Friday!

Today’s video is the story of Mara Parker, an adoptee who found her birth father with the help of AncestryDNA.  This video from the Steve Harvey Show explains how Mara used Ancestry.com and DNA testing to locate her birth father.

To learn more about DNA testing, read my post Adoptees Use DNA Testing to Find Relatives.

Blessings for knowing your ancestry,

Vicki-lynn

Hartford Courant Letter: Connecticut Adoptees Rights Bill SB 59 Not Revolutionary

/ V.L. Brunskill / 4 Comments

In a February 25, 2013 letter published in the Hartford Courant, Paul Schibbelhute, a legislative adviser to Access Connecticut, an advocacy group for adult adoptees, questions proposed Connecticut Senate Bill SB 59.

Schibbelhute writes that the bill, “presently in Public Health Committee is an opportunity for Connecticut to join New Hampshire, Maine and Rhode Island as states that have restored the “human right” for all adult adoptees born in these states to obtain their original birth certificates (OBC).”

According to Schibbelhute’s letter, the bill would “deny all adoptees born before June 1, 2014, (the proposed effective date of the bill) the right to obtain their OBCs.” There is nothing equal or human about the bill as written. It will do nothing for the thousands of adult adoptees now seeking their OBC’s.

Tiff_ku1/Flickr.com

Tiff_ku1/Flickr.com

As I see it, it is a band-aid, meant to shut up the whining masses of adoptees who have the gall to request a document that every non-adopted American has access to. Bill SB 59 is a lame attempt by Connecticut officials to address the issue of equal access without rocking the moral boat of the scaredy cats who believe more in the privacy rights of birth mothers, than in the human rights of adoptees.

Senate Bill SB 59 as presented, blows a lot of smoke, but fails to flame any real change in the Connecticut movement for equal access to OBCs.  

If you believe that Connecticut adoptees deserve equal access to their Original Birth Certificates (OBCs) – get involved today. Contact information for the grass roots group Access Connecticut is available on its contact page.

You can read about the Bill and track its progress here.

Blessings for equal access laws that make a  real difference!

Vicki-lynn

Reunion Video Captures Bone-Chilling Anguish of Korean Birthmother

/ V.L. Brunskill / 8 Comments

One look at this footage of Kira Donnell’s reunion with her Korean birth mother, and you are privy to the torment many birth mothers carry in their hearts after relinquishing a child.

This brilliant, video journal by Kira Donnell also represents the essence of our need to know.  Get the tissues ready.

Recovering What Was Left Behind
by Kira Donnell

Blessings for a reunion that heals,

Vicki-lynn

Use Search Passion to Fight for Adoption Rights & Equal Access- Here’s How

/ V.L. Brunskill / 3 Comments

During my decade long search for common ground, my heart pulsed with anger and outrage over the indelicate, unfair and closeted treatment of hundreds of thousands of adult adoptees.  “In the best interest of the child,” was the mantra of adoption agency representatives. My reply, “Well that child no longer exists. I am an adult, and all  I want is what you have, a familiarity of face, place, nationality and genetics.”

I often felt alone, singled out and hopeless. However, searching is not odd, uncommon or unique. Just look at the Facebook page- You Know You’re An Adoptee When, and you will be amazed, and saddened by the number of people who are desperately looking for biological siblings, parents, and children. We are nation of missing people. In fact, stats posted at adoption.com indicate that:

  • 2-4% of all adoptees searched in 1990. (American Adoption Congress, 1996)
  • 500,000 adult adoptees were seeking or had found birth families in the late 80’s. (Groza and Rosenberg, 1998)

During my search, one of the things that helped me to persevere was the channeling of my passion to find, into a passion to change the world. Well, not the world, but at least NY state law.

BurgTender/Flickr.com

BurgTender/Flickr.com

If you are suffering the personal plaque of not knowing, it is time to reach beyond your search. As more of us express outrage over antiquated laws, and the lack of access to original birth certificates we grow more influential. The power of social media, and easy access to government officials via email, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, has allowed adoption rights groups to make some headway to change adoption law.

A recent post on the Lost Daughter blog, explains how to channel your passion to know who you are, into action for change.  ‘How to Write to Your Legislator about Adoptee Rights’ explains how to find a Representative in your state, how to contact them, and what to include in yourcorrespondence. There is also a link to Bastard Nation‘s Influencing Legislation page, which includes sample letters.

Blessings for change, and fair treatment for all,
Vicki-lynn