@defendsurvivors
✨ Activist for abuse/trauma survivors Fierce advocate & proud mom | Adoptee | Blog https://open.substack.com/pub/defendsurvivors 🛍️ Worthy & Wonderful Shop https://worthywonderfulshop.etsy.com
There are two ways to help a pregnant mother in a crisis to care for her child.
1. Step into her life and help her and the child.
2. Blackmail her that you’ll help her child if you can own the child and make it yours.
#adoptionistrauma
People say it’s easier to support a perpetrator than a victim, but that’s not true. People could choose to support you as easily as they are choosing to support the perpetrator.
It’s a choice.
#supportsurvivors #choosewisely
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“My adoptive family knew my mother's name and my father's name my whole life. She did not have anonymity. She did not have confidentiality. The only person her identity was kept from was me.”
#adopteerights #humanrights #adoption
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‘Jokes’ are an abuser’s favorite weapon.
One word I’d be so happy to never hear again? Forgiveness.
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When you give an abuser power, don’t be shocked when they use it to be cruel.
#perpetrator101
Why don’t survivors tell they’re being abused? Because when a perpetrator says they’ll destroy you, you know they mean it and are capable of doing it. Stop blaming survivors for accurately calculating their risk of what will happen if they tell and instead protect them.
“There was nothing about you that made you get hurt. Put all the guilt, blame, and shame on the perpetrator and leave it there.”
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Adoption does not always mean a child goes to a loving family. Just look at the vile comments from adoptive parents on an adoptee’s post sharing their trauma. The responses say a lot about many of the people adopting and supporting this 25 billion dollar industry.
My mother was told I’d be better off without her. I always believed my mother was better off without me. It was all lies. #adoptionistrauma
When I hear adopters say how selfless the birth mother was to give her child a better life, I always think - why weren’t you selfless and help her so her child and her could stay together and both have a better life. #adopteevoices
“Survivors don’t need anyone else telling them what they should do or have to do to ‘heal’. The last thing they need is someone else trying to control them again. Survivors need to know they are in control and that they are the experts in their experience.”
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The adopters that make such vile comments on adoptee’s post prove the type of people many children are placed with and why adoption does not mean a child will go to a loving home.
People always say “your mother loved you so much she gave you away so you could have a better life.” - so, yes what she did was out of love but what everyone else did was blackmail her into the only choice for her child to be okay was to give her child to them. #adoptiontrauma
I hurt myself, my children, and my mother with a misplaced sense of responsibility to my adoptive family that ended up lying to me my whole life. If you’re an adoptee, your adoptive family should be the first people making sure you know your family and identity. #adopteevoices
Knowing my mother now, the pain is palpable that I’ve lived my whole life without her. Adoption is so much pain and trauma. #adoptionistrauma
“They were always nice to me” watch to see what that tells us about the perpetrator and the person saying that.
#perpetrator101 #believesurvivors
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“Survivors aren’t living in the past - they are trying to make sense of the present.”
Dismantling harmful messages because shame isn’t support.
#respectsurvivors #supportsurvivors
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Someone saying they are “desperate for a baby” should be a massive red flag.
#adoptionistrauma
Adoption usually means giving a child to strangers. That should be the absolute last resort option as it would be in any other situation. It isn’t beautiful - it’s trauma.
(Vetting someone doesn’t make them not a stranger.)
#adoptionistrauma #childrights
The opposite of love is use. If you’re using a child to meet your needs and build your family while ignoring the child’s needs and rights to their family - that’s not love.
#useisnotlove #adoptionistrauma
We’ve lost the focus when we start talking about family creation instead of human being creation. All children - humans - are born with a right to their identity and family. Helping a child means stepping into their life not removing them from it to create ‘your family’. #childrights
If every relinquishment was overturned due to the coercion and manipulation of a vulnerable mother, very few relinquishments would still be valid.
#mothersrights #adoption
“Being an adoptee under sealed records laws is like being placed in a permanent conservatorship. We are treated as perpetually incapable of handling information about ourselves. We are not allowed to make our own decisions based on information about our own lives.”
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“This year, I had to process losing two families: the one I thought I had and the one I never had.”
#adoptionistrauma #adopteevoices #family
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One of the first things adoptees are frequently asked when looking for their family is “what do you want?”
For many of us, the answer is simple - we want our family.
#adoptionistrauma #myfamily
Uniquely adoptee experience: being in reunion and realizing that of all these new family members, you’re literally the OG.
#eldestdaughter #adoptee
If you don’t care about what your child was literally created from and care about them knowing that and their family, history, and heritage - then you don’t really care about the child. That’s not being a parent - that’s being an abuser.
#adoption #adopteerights #abuseisnotlove
“Being trauma informed means understanding the survivor knows more about their trauma than you ever will.”
#respectsurvivors
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“One person did know I was adopted that wasn’t supposed to know, and she’s the person who called me that day.”
People say it’s not my secret to tell but it’s not your secret to keep if it’s something that person has a right to know.
#adopteevoices #liesareabuse
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