The First adoptēre Newsletter!
Welcome!
If you’ve followed the adoptēre publication, you may have already seen several amazing stories shared by now-adult adoptees who have experienced adoption from within the institution.
We all know the version of adoption we’ve been sold via Hallmark-esque marketing. A feel-good tale of someone, typically a comfortable white couple, “saving” a child in some way.
Celebrities have flown around the world to “save” babies from nations that have now taken legal action to prevent the adoption of their children. The UN has instituted ‘ground rules’ around the treatment of children and forbidding the practice of adoption as it is executed in the United States in any of the participating nations (unsurprisingly, the US sat this one out).
We’ve seen adoption touted as the ‘solution’ to problems from poverty to abortion, the rallying cry of “Just give your baby away!” ringing loud and clear throughout.
The narrative that hasn’t been heard, at least not until now, is the voice of those children who were bought and sold, traded like puppies from shelters, the adoptees themselves.
adoptēre is the place for those voices. We exist to amplify the voices of adoptees to audit the existing narrative, the false, harmful, and reductive narrative, around the institution of adoption.
Who am I to lead this charge?
My name is Melissa Corrigan, and I am an adoptee. I was taken from my parents in 1984. My parents were impoverished, and my paternal grandmother (who had alcoholism and mental health issues) weaponized DSS against my mother by calling them whenever they had disagreements.
Once DSS entered the picture, we (my brother and I) were whisked away from our parents and entered foster care. We passed through eight foster homes in a few short years, and many of those stays were cut short when I told our social worker about abuse we experienced in the home.
One of my very earliest memories is of sexual abuse. I had to be no older than 3, maybe four years old. I told my social worker, and we continued our whirlwind tour through several foster homes all over the state of South Carolina, from Charleston to the upstate.
We experienced abuse and/or neglect in every foster home. Sometimes a foster home was eager to take in many children to get more monthly checks, so we stayed in utility rooms or lean-to’s lined with metal bunk beds, a sheet in the middle of the room dividing the “girls” and “boys” sections. At those homes, we rarely ate anything more substantial than a sandwich. Sandwiches morning, noon, and night. I could go my entire life without eating another sandwich!
After those years in foster care, we were “selected” (from a book, seriously!) by a pastor and his wife in rural South Carolina. After meeting them around three times, we went to court, were adopted, and were left to be raised by them with never another visit from a social worker to check up on us.
Thus began years of hell in that adoptive home where I was physically, sexually, verbally, and mentally abused. I left and was entirely on my own at 19, at which point I was homeless for several months until I got on my feet. Since then, I have served in the US Navy, gone to college, served in the nonprofit sector for over a decade, opened my own consultancy, started my own family, and written extensively about my life experiences.
I have been a vocal advocate against adoption for decades, as have many adoptees, but until recently, our voices went into a dark void. No one wanted to hear unpleasant truths about adoption — they prefer to think of it in those saccharine, misleading terms as presented by adoption agencies, social workers, and other entities who immediately benefit from the continued practice of trafficking children both within and from outside the United States.
In 2021, after twenty long years of searching, I found my biological father. A DNA test cracked the code, sending me on a search that ended with an obituary from 2012, that of my paternal grandfather, which named my brother and me as his grandchildren.
Unfortunately, this was during the thick of the Covid quarantine period, and my father was in a residential medical facility that wasn’t allowing any outside visitors. In April, he succumbed to a severe respiratory infection, most likely Covid, and passed away before I could meet him.
After a period of deep and inexplicable grief, I resumed searching for my mother, my hopes of her being alive severely diminished after the death of my father.
However, in August of 2022, I drove to South Carolina to meet Vickie, my amazing mother. Accompanied by my oldest child and my lifelong best friend, I finally met the woman who gave me life. I was 40 years old meeting my mother.
My story is proof that tragedy is real, and also that happy endings are possible. But this happy ending took twenty solid years of searching, hundreds of hours of digging through public records, microfiche scrolling until my head spun, contemplation of bribing public officials, and employing friends in the search.
All because the State of South Carolina does not recognize my human rights to have access to my original birth certificate as a legal adult.
We have so far to go. Adoptees are human beings with rights, and at the very least, we should have access to the information of who we are.
In that vein, I am seeking to share as many of our stories as possible. I am dedicated to continuing to elevate the voices of adoptees and advocating for abolishing or drastically reforming the institution of adoption as it is practiced in the United States until America’s children (and the children of the world) are safe from being traded like products to fulfill demand.
While I do not expect the writers of adoptēre to all hold the same ideological position as I do, I am clear that our publication exists to uplift the voices of adoptees and to provide honest and authentic accounts of what adoptees experience. However they choose to express their accounts of their adoption experiences will be respected and published, meaning that if you had a wonderful adoption experience and have a great relationship with your adopters, I will absolutely publish your story because your story matters, too!
I am so grateful you’ve taken an interest in adoptēre, and I look forward to bringing you quality stories to inform, educate, and advocate.
Thank you, and in all things, be well.
