Note also in the comments, what Brian Donahue says (I will bold them) as he is offering a valid point and Joan/Doris and Sandy REFUSE to acknowledge.
https://www.facebook.com/sandy.musser.10/posts/10156154904348520
November 11 at 7:27 PM Sandy Musser Dear Adoption Adoptee Friends:
Over the last several years, I’d noticed that many of the adoptees who have crossed my path, had suffered Rejection from both their Adoptive Parent(s) and their Natural Parent(s).
I remember thinking how difficult it would be to have rejection from both sides (whether it be one parent or both) so I began to ask some of them if they would be willing to share their stories. Within a short time several responded, and we got the ball rolling! But not too many months later, I began to have memory problems and eventually diagnosed with “mild cognitive/pre-dementia”. It made me very aware that It was time for me to cut back on my work.
I knew I wanted to call on someone who would be able to jump in and pick up where I had left off, and move forward with the project. I called on a close adoptee writer friend, who I’ve known since the late 70s/early 80s, to see if she would be willing. She said she’d be happy to do so, which took a big load off my shoulders.
We just chatted recently, and it should be wrapped up soon after the first of the year. I’m sharing this info with you now because we also discussed, and decided, that the issue is so important that it can (and should) become a series.If this fits your experience and is something you wish to share, please contact either one of us on Messenger — or even if you have questions. Thanks
Kelleen Carter Hey you finished it..can't wait to read it
Doris Michol Sippel Nope! We need 1 more contributor to make the 10th! We are looking for that ONE MORE PERSON! If we get 20 more contributors, we can make a series of books!
Brian Donahue I hope you will present points of views of differing experiences of adoptees. As you know, I fully understand and feel 100& it is best for children to be raised with their first parents, and if not, that they be placed with relatives or family friends. However when this can’t happen, the children need permanency which includes adoption. Many adoptees have had safe and nurturing environments growing up. I would hope that is explored in the anthology. Adoption is not the preferred option but for some individuals it was/is the only option.
Doris Michol Sippel Adoption should never be an option. And you should know why!
Brian Donahue to Doris Michol Sippel I disagree that adoption is never an option. If a child is not able to reside with the first parent, is not able to reside with relatives or family friends, I do think adoption is appropriate. A child is better off being with a family who can provide for the child as opposed to growing up in foster care. I go back to what I wrote, adoption should definitely not be the first option. The goal should be that the child should be able to reside with the first family with services put into place. However there are children who are not able to safely reside with first parent, relatives, nor family friends. When that is the case, it is better off the child grows up in a family environment who can offer the child permanency. There are many foster children, and adults who grew up in foster care, who would dispute strongly with what you say. I would listen to them more than someone who can only think in only one mindset.
Doris Michol Sippel to Brian Donahue By now, you ought to know that all adoptions result in the revocation, sealing, and replacing of an adoptee's birth certificate. That is NEVER an acceptable violation of an adoptee's civil and human rights. Kinship care, legal custodial guardianship are safe alternatives to adoption.
Brian Donahue to Doris Michol Sippel I agree that birth certificates should never be sealed. Anyone who knows me, Sandy can attest, I have spent much time and efforts in the movement of having open adoption and access to the original birth certificates. I think there should only be original birth certificates but that is different than saying adoption is wrong in each and every case. I would not make that blanket statements. I would also say that not ALL individuals have sealed birth certificates. In my state alone any child born and adopted from 10/1/83 to the present do not have sealed birth certificates. This is the case also in Rhode Island, Hawaii, and other states. Again there are individuals who would say that they would have wanted to be adopted. The two issues of access to original birth certificates and adoption are not necessarily two direct connected issues. There are adoptees who have access to their original birth certificates. These adoptees would deny they were abused and neglected by their adoptive parents. One can’t make a blanket statement and say it applies to all individuals.
Doris Michol Sippel to Brian Donahue You misunderstand. The point is not that adoptees have access to their sealed birth certificate, there should not be an amended birth certificate at all. Adoption does that. Anyway, this book is not about that issue. This book is about adoptees who have experienced rejection, and or abuse or any type, from either natural family at birth or growing up that resulted in the adoption, or from adoptive parents or extended family, or both families.
Brian Donahue to Doris Michol Sippel, I wrote above that I think that there should only be original birth certificates and not have them amended. I agree for the reasons you have outlined. I believe in that very much which is why I have advocated for organizations, faith groups, and for foster/adoptive parents to become active in the movement.
I would also agree with your last half of the paragraph abuse and neglect can occur in both adoptive and first family home environments. The public could learn about varying experiences. What does concern me is this is not explained on your personal Facebook page. You write something different there than what you write above in the second paragraph. On your page it appears the book will be about adoptees who were abused and neglected by their adoptive parents only. I think if you want others than first parents and abused and neglected adoptees to purchase the book when it is completed you may want to capture what you wrote above in the last paragraph. If your anthology explained that in the details, it would have a further outreach to others who would purchase the book in the hopes of learning something and resulting in policy being formed in the future to help bring out adoptees’ messages. One should have a fair balance.
Brian Donahue to Doris Michol Sippel if it is balanced it will bring respectability and genuineness to the book.
Sandy Musser to Brian Donahue
In response to several of your comments, I thought I’d jump in. I don’t think that I have to tell you, Brian, that when the average person hears the word “adoption”, or “adoptive parents”, their normal thought process, or verbiage, is “what wonderful people who take in those unwanted babies and children.” They are usually looked upon as Saints!
Many of us have been around for a long time and have come to learn —- it’s JUST NOT ALWAYS the case, nor is it reality! People are People. The word Adoptive Parent does not automatically make them better!! You mentioned “permanency”, which is almost always used when the discussion of adoption comes into play, but in reality we ALL KNOW that there is no such thing as PERMANENCY - because there are no Guarantees.
There can’t be ANY guarantees because in any family setting there may be alcoholism, drug abuse, mental illness, anger issues, etc. etc. If we’re truly honest with one another, people are just people. All different, with many foibles, and since that’s the bottom line. It is why I believe so strongly that . . CHILDREN, in my humble opinion, SHOULD ALWAYS REMAIN WITH SOMEONE IN THE EXTENDED FAMILY; when you consider it, would be no different than Open Adoption except they would be Genetically Related FAMILY! Very important for every child’s Well Being!
At this late date in my long journey, I’m fully convinced, and have been for some time, that closed, sealed, secret adoption must be ABOLISHED. It has created many more problems than it has solved, for many caught in its web! Permission is granted for anyone to copy and paste this post if it will open up others’ understanding. Sandy Musser
Doris Michol Sippel We have our 10th contributor! Tracy L. Hammond!!! That closes contributors for this first book, which I can get published by the end of December or very early January! If anyone else, or a bunch of people, want to to contribute to another volume, please do! As Sandy says, we can do a series!
Ruth Herr Sippel Pace to Sandy Musser says: "Over the last several years, I’d noticed that many of the adoptees who have crossed my path, had suffered Rejection from both their Adoptive Parent(s) and their Natural Parent(s)."
sometimes there is another side of a story -- how the 'rejection' (after a reunion) by the Natural 'collective family' sometimes comes about when the found-adoptee turns out to be an abusive person?
When a person comes into my life, and that person engages in anti-social behaviors, such as lying, manipulating people against each other to create strife, STEALING, harassment, STALKING (repeatedly calling a person's job with lies to get them fired), sending letters to a woman and telling that woman her husband got the next door neighbor pregnant (when the house was vacant); -- well that person gets booted OUT of my life. Even if that person IS related to me.
And if that person is an adoptee, and my booting them out of my life is considered 'rejection' -- well they need to suck it up and accept the consequences of their actions.
An adoptee's 'pain' is no excuse to abuse others and expect another person to roll over and accept that abuse. I'm sure this comment will be deleted, because sometimes people cannot or will not face the truth. -- but at least I try to get another perspective out there.
Ruth Herr Sippel Pace regarding my statement about adoptees dealing with rejection issues (from natural families and adoption families): I was speaking from my point of view of someone (me) who DID reject an adoptee -- post reunion. Because of HER behavior, not because she was an adoptee. Not all adoptees are in a reunion, or even have sabotaged their own reunion.
Again, I was speaking of only the dynamics involved in MY experience with a particular adoptee, I was not speaking of ALL reunions or adoptees.
The particular adoptee I was speaking of, Joan Mary Wheeler/Doris Michol Sippel WAS extremely abusive to me, and other members of both her adoptive and natural families. If she is experiencing feelings of rejection by people after they have gotten to know her or have been involved with her, instead of whining that "my birth sisters wanted me to behave a certain way," (quote from her book Forbidden Family), she needs to look in the mirror and see what she has done to make people from not only her adoptive and birth families, but friends, neighbors, acquaintainces, boyfriends, --- tell her to get lost and/or run the hell away from her.
The way we 'wanted' her to behave is how everyone expects other people to behave towards them: with respect, kindness, love. Not being lied to, stolen from, harassed, stalked, also helps in any relationship.
I should have made these points clearer. And I apologize for making this personal -- but just wanted to clear things up. -- An adoptee fb friend of mine told me yesterday -- "this is an abusive person problem, not an adoptee problem" -- and she is correct. I am only speaking out because this particular person is abusive, is an adoptee, and does not alway tell the complete story, and has in the past told other adoptees to go after me. 'shut her blog down' etc.I had many obscene comments placed on my blog by adoptees. And it seems strange to me that this abusive person is the one publishing this book. I apologize for lumping all adoptees into one category. I have contacts with other adoptees on facebook, and they certainly are not like this person.
Gert’s comment
I am one of several birth sibs to Doris M Sippel, adopted name Joan M Wheeler. Joan legally changed her name back to birth name a couple of years ago.
To many the party line is that adoption is evil and it should NEVER be used! I don’t believe that for one second! ABUSE happens to anyone by anyone! If Joan/Doris was abused it was from the adoptive parents/family! Abuse is ALSO a LEARNED BEHAVIOR. In my family we were NOT ABUSED, we did NOT LEARN ABUSIVE BEHAVIOR. Joan/Doris did NOT live in the same home environments (plural) that her sibs lived and that is WHY she had NO IDEA on how our social behaviors were, how we don’t TOLERATE abusive behaviors to us.
We, birth sibs, found her in 1974 when she was 18. Over time it was Joan herself that ABUSED each and every birth family member, including our father. Over decades each and every family turned their backs on her, including our father when she FIRST published the lies about our family in 2009 because of her insults and lies! Our father REMOVED HER as a child of his on his obit because of that FIRST publication. Joan/Doris broke the contract with the first publisher that ‘all’ was true, but once the publisher SAW documents, from the family, they terminated publishing that lying book! Years later Joan/Doris created Identity Press and RE-PUBLISHED the same book, with more lies, TWICE MORE. And now she’ll do it again with this attempt.
Joan has a ‘hard on’ against adoption and she MAKES UP STORIES to prove her assertions that adoption is an evil! Believe me the birth family KNOWS her quite well and have been the target of her abuse since 1974!
I know about foster care and know the value of adoption in many cases but leaving facts of how the birth family was devastated and sibs placed out, etc etc, when our mother died and the reason WHY Joan was placed into adoption, for another time…
I myself ADOPTED my own child via step-parent adoption. But Joan, in her 20ish wisdom, deemed me to be an unfit mother for ‘giving away my child’ (on paper) and adopting him giving him a FALSE IDENTITY. She furthered this with alienating my minor children from me, behind my back, VIOLATING my parental rights. Then sued me in Family Court wanting to take custody, she failed the home study. I had to place my child into a PIN circumstance to protect her…but Joan wrote that my children ‘were taken away from me’…WRONG, I placed my daughter in a PIN for protection AWAY from Joan! She said that the reason why my daughter was NOT adopted was because of abuse by my husband…WRONG. It was both my children’s CHOICE to be or not be adopted, they were over the age of 14 and HAD TO GIVE THEIR OWN PERMISSION. Plus my family had gone through a very extensive BACKGROUND check…but none of that was good by Joan’s standards…she hates adoption, period! The overall effects of Joan’s abuse to me and my family ripped my family apart. She lies, in print, that I sexually assaulted her and made her smoke pot and that my daughter was sexually abused by my husband and son! All wrong!
I am close to 72 years old and amongst things I just finished a 200 hour (9 month course) for yoga teacher certification! I have a very active wide life. My partner, age 78, JUST finished radiation treatment for prostate cancer! LIFE IS TOO DAMM SHORT to waste on a crazy mentally ill (documented by herself) narcissistic socio-path that wants to spend her entire life fighting others who DARE to adopt and love and care for children!
You will NEVER stop the institution of adoption and will NEVER ‘teach’ others by your tactics of brow-beating and hate-mongering. I’m seen far too much since 2009 when Joan first published lies about the birth family after we all dealt with her abuse since 1974 and we have tried to get her out of our lives! But because she’s a crazy she keeps coming back and back and back with more outrageous lies about the ABUSE SHE GOT. HAVE AT IT! See where all this gets you when you are on your DEATH BED ALL ALONE.
End of thread…
Gert again... According to Joan/Doris ‘dead people can’t sue and neither can their heirs’. Conveniently all the parents are DEAD and well who has $10,000 to sue? So now she can say whatever she wants about dead people and continue on with lying and destroying people’s lives and reputations.
