ESTRANGED BY JESSICA BERGER GROSS : ANCESTRY WORSHIP - GENEALOGY : BOOK REVIEW

 

I felt a tension as I read this page-turner book, creatively written by Jessica Berger Gross. The scenes of domestic violence are impactful but I admit I kept wondering if it was building to worse violence, especially as the author went through puberty. I kept wondering if there was going to be a diagnosis, especially of her angry father's mental illness since he lost work over it. There was not. 

The beatings described are actually the most common form of domestic violence; A mother who cannot leave with her children, a mother who does not stop her husband from abusing her daughter, everyone thinking "it's not so bad" or counting time by the periods of relative quiet. Rewriting history. A brother who has learned by his parent's example it is OK to beat up his sister as well. Eventually sisters in law who wonder if it is OK to leave the grandchildren with their grandparents and seem to dismiss physical abuse potential as not so bad.

Jessica achieved.  She went to Vassar.  She traveled.  Like many young adults, she explored and had experiences that would help her discover who she was other than a daughter, what she thought and believed, where she did or did not fit. Slowly she found a person or two who she could tell. Telling was risky. She fell in love. She had relationships. However, the whole time she was just holding on and didn't always know that. A mental breakdown had been staved off but was almost inevitable and she was the one - I say the healthiest one in the family - who sought help and was also forced to find help. A loving and loyal partner made a difference.

Like many people who have to go NO CONTACT, Ms. Berger was not thinking, "I will never see them or speak to them again," she was simply unable to take any more and saw that she was better off not knowing her family of origin, even though she could remember good times and that her parents had also done thing that showed them to be in some ways caring parents. She felt shame in having been abused and guilt in cutting off her family.  She wondered about religious observances, and she experienced a serious depression.  She quit a job she fought for and made a boss angry.  She heard that "you will never work in this town again' kind of message and even considered suicide.

As Jessica became a married woman who wanted children, she experienced a longing for her own mother at times. A miscarriage and infertility made having her own family difficult.  Going NO CONTACT is not an easy decision or one that a person won't question.  Importantly, she sees forgiveness not as "forgive and forget" but as acceptance. 

Are you a person who was abused as a child or holding to unspoken contracts within youf family to remain in the role of the child who will accept abuse?

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SO SWEET! HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY

 

BEFORE and AFTER : AT LEAST 500 BABIES DIED IN GEORGIA TANN's CARE and THEN THERE WERE THE STOLEN

The records are held at The Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library in the Memphis and Shelby County room on the third floor., the space that houses the official archival collection of materials about Georgia Tann d the eventual demise of her empire,

Pages 226- 227

That faux-leather bank portfolio, the keeping pace of the disparate clues to Robert's biological history and mysterious adoption is a potent symbol, I've come to realize,  Everyone who shows up at our Saturday afternoon gatherings for adoptees and families has their own version of it,  Lillian has her tote bag full of records, Connie has her binder, Hanie has her wheelie crate, Brigette carried a notebook straining against the reams of information about the family members she has finally uncovered for her father, James.

A manila folder here, A display board there.  And old shoe box.

A plastic tone with a snap-on lid.

The attendees place these items with care of the library's stately antique wooden tables  Out reunion group is meeting in the Benjamin L Hooks Central Library, in the Memphis and Shelby County Room of materials about Georgia Tann and the eventual demise of her empire.

But these adoptees 'bibles' are smaller, more personal type of archive.  They're filled with decades old records and details of what has often been an excruciating search, bits and pieces of a poignant heritage in plastic sleeves" black and white photos of adoption day; the only picture of birth parents; a newspaper clipping about Tann's misdeeds; records from TCHS, retrieved fro the state of Tennessee at a cost, original birth-certificates, court filings; sometimes letters to and from Tann herself.....

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ONE OF THE CRUELTIES IS THAT SOME OF THE MOTHERS WERE TOLD, that after a Successful childbirth their babies DIED IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT!!!  The hospitals were implicit in this deception. They took advantage of young parents who had no money for a funeral and would say that all they had to do was sign and the hospital would take care of the body....  In this case there had not been any desire to adopt a child out and the parents have no idea that there's a child alive and out there somewhere.   Worse some children were STOLEN...  And some, estimated 500 did die in the care of her "receiving Home."

page 269 :
An Elmwood Cemetery lane winds its way past both elaborate and simple headstones.  The graveyard was founded in 1852 way out in the countryside, to give people a pastoral place where they could retreat from the hustle and bustle of city life. In more than a century, the city has crept near, but the original idea of a garden-like setting remains. Approximately 80,000 people people are  buried here in this historic nonprofit cemetery, safe under the watchful eyes of executive director Kim Bearden, who has run it for the past twenty years.

We are here to see only one grave. A resting place that  cradles many lives and represents many more.

Nineteen babies registered by Tann as having died in the care of TCHS lie here, their deaths recorded between September 17, 1923 and December 10, 1949. Only nineteen of the five hundred estimated to have died in the care of her system of unregulated boardinghouses and the notorious Receiving Home on Poplar Avenue are remembered here. The monument on the TCHS lot was erected just three years ago, after a historian discovered the communal plot in the cemetery's record books. He pointed out the  shame of the graves having gone unmarked for decades, the children, once more, forgotten. The cemetery raised donations for a proper marker.

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You can pull up past posts on Adoption using the search feature in Google Blogger or by clicking on the label adoptions.  I highly recommend using ADOPTION REGISTRIES as a first step.

BEFORE and AFTER by JUDY CHRISTIE and LISA WINGATE :ANCESTRY WORSHIP - GENEALOGY BOOK REVIEW

BEFORE and AFTER by Judy Christie and Lisa Wingate

The Incredible Read Life Stories of Orphans Who Survived The Tennessee Children's Home Society.

Commentary:  Highly Recommended.

This book is about the children who were adopted through the Tennessee Children's Home Society, which was run by a woman named Georgia Tann, who owned TCHS and whose means for acquiring newborns and babies to be put up for adoption were questionably honorable and then became downright criminal.  These children searched for their birth parents and the news was bad. Georgia Tann died with criminal charges against her business pending.

It's a series of emotional stories by the adoptees and their families describing the situations in which mothers  gave up their babies to Tann. These birth mothers were in desperate circumstances, not unimaginable today, but during the years when social services in America were not in place, when abortion was always dangerous or illegal, and when open adoption was non-existent. Information about the origins of the baby and their parentage was edited by Tann. Adoptive parents were grateful to her and not always asking questions, so long as the baby was healthy. Money went into her pocket. Eventually many others who should have known better were lying to parents that meant to keep their babies that the baby had died in the night.  Instead these were stolen. So imagine if you found out that your parents had been lied to in this way and that you had started life out as a baby they intended to keep.

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Years ago I had a friend who, with her husband, and after a bout of cancer in her 30's, wished to adopt.  They went through a living hell to qualify to adopt a child, even with the help of a sympathetic and honorable lawyer. Ads were placed in three states where abortion was looked down upon.  Birth mothers phoned long distance.  My friend and her husband had to turn over health and financial records.  The birth mothers who were doing the choosing. My friend and her husband owned a home and had a spare bedroom. 

Good thing because an adopted child had to have their own room. They paid out thousands for investigations and home inspections and interviews.  

They were told there were years long wait for babies born addicted to crack.  Insulting to me, though not personal, was that they also had to have twelve letters of recommendations by other married couples, so unmarried friend's recommendations or input were not sought. And they were told that if either of them hit the age of 40 without adopting it was hopeless.  NO WONDER SO MANY CHILDREN SPEND THEIR LIVES IN FOSTER CARE, where it is OK to be stacked up in bunk beds in shared rooms and people do not have to be homeowners or financially well off.

Her cancer seemed to be an obstacle and after many rejections by birth mothers who were opting for open adoptions, a roller coaster ride of hope and dejection, they never did succeed.

If two college educated people who have a hundred thousand in the bank and own a nice house, have no criminal background or addiction experiences can't get a baby, well, one must have to be really elite.  NO WONDER SO MANY PEOPLE ARE HAVING BABIES BY SURROGATE!

All that said, it seems some, if not many, adoptees do want to know how it is that they were adopted and this book's chapters reveal some of the stories discovered by those adopted out of Tann's business.

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The following excerpts are so revealing about Tann's "toxic" adoption practices which went on for twenty-five years which ended about 1950 :

Prologue: "Tanns empire at the Tennessee Children;s Home Society - shortened to TCHS by those familiar with the operation - has been built with a combustible blend of desperate pregnant women shattered children, vulnerable poverty-stricken families, eager adoptive parents, powerful politicians, ego, and greed.   ...   The new Tennessee governor, Gordon Browing. appoints attorney Robert Taylor to ferret out the grisly truth of TCHS' Memphis operations.  He has already discovered damning evidence.  Only a small network of co- conspirators know the truth.  With the investigation under way, they flee into the crevasses of Memphis and disappear like rats running into the city's sewers. .... Governor Brown releases Taylor's shocking initial report, which details Tann's years of nefarious dealings in the adoption market.  She has, the governor reveals, made herself rich and completed an unknown number of horrendous deals involving flesh-and-blood products.  ... 

page 7 : Within days --- it is announced that she (Tann) has died. The orphanage is not mentioned. The Tennessee State Legislature quickly and quietly  seals the paperwork of thousands of TCHS children, which will leave adoptees desperately searching for decades to uncover the truth about their heritage. The investigation concludes that Tann profited from the operation of TCHS in Memphis in excess of five hundred thousand dollars in the last ten years of her life (she died age 59 of, interestingly, uterine cancer) in excess of five hundred thousand dollars - taking in today's equivalent of between five and ten million dollars. ....  During that period, the investigation found, she placed more than a thousand children for adoption outside the state of Tennessee, principally in New York and California, the exact number unknown....

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NOTE: TENNESSEE LAW CHANGES and the records that have been maintained become available though an adoptee  has to pay fees and got though proving they are eligible for the research service.

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