By Scarlett West
The day I adopted back my natural daughter, lost for 18 years to adoption, was wonderful. A milestone in my life, second only to giving birth to my children.
I remember everything about that day so clearly. While we sat in court waiting for our case to be heard, we sat next to a adoption lawyer / broker who was adopting a infant girl out to her desparately waiting adoptors. I glanced over at the sheet and saw that this lawyer’s fees were to the tune of $40,000 dollars. Forty thousand dollars for something that my daughter and I did for under one thousand! And that included our celebration dinner with the whole family, gas and the 3 times we went back and forth to court.
There were other adopters filling the courtroom, awkardly listening to every word I spoke as I told the judge my story. Adopters who uncomfortably looked down at their “possesions,” a bit scared and wondering if they were witnessing their future demise.
The whole room fell silent and they strained their ears to hear my tale, of being forced to relinquish my beautiful twin daughters, I spoke up loud and clear when I told the tale of my prejudiced mother, who was only interested in dumping her biracial grandchildren off on someone else, so she could get on with her life.
My voice shook with anger as I described her actions, sentencing me to a fate worse than death as everyday for 18 years I wondered and worried if my children were even alive, or well, or being fed, or being abused.
Everyday I waited patiently until I could get them. I thought of them every day and if i were to have found them before they turned 18, I would have been in jail for taking back what was stolen from me … my children, my beautiful twins.
The judge fought back tears, granted my adoption legalizing my relationship, restoring what was taken a long time ago. She said “I’m proud to be a part of this sacred and rare event.” You know there a old saying, “You can not choose your parents,” but my child chose me. Because she knew it was the way it was meant to be. Naturally.
As I turned to leave the courtroom with my new status, the adoptresses with their lawyers could not even look me in the eye. See, I wasn’t what they wanted to hear, they wanted to hear some bullshit story about how mothers really do not want their children. They wanted to hear that, so they could sleep well at night, with someone else’s baby under their roofs, and in their empty barren arms. they wanted to be justified in creating the appearnce of fertility with someone else child.
But I did not give it to them, I told the truth. The truth they always knew in their hearts, behind every adoption is a tragedy, and they are the main participants in that tragedy.
I walked out with my head held high and stared them all down, and they actually seemed to cower in the presence of my truth.
They actually shrunk in their seats with every true word that poured out of my mouth and out of my heart. I stared at them and they knew what I meant without saying a word. That’s right, adopters, beware, by the time your generation of adoptees grow up this will be a common thing. We will get our children back.
Copyright 2004 Scarlett West