Washington Attorney Advocates Open Adoption

Online, March 23, 2011 (Newswire.com) - "Back in the 1940s, records were sealed to shield birth parents and their children from the stigma then associated with adoption. But society's views have changed, and the laws increasingly favor open adoption to help adoptees gain access to information about their identity and find their birth families if they so desire. That's a positive change, and I fully support giving other adoptees the chance I've had to connect with their birth families and, perhaps, even form permanent relationships with them. My life is fuller and, ultimately, more satisfying because I've had that opportunity." So says David R. Ford, an attorney, business advisor and writer based in Washington, DC, whose professional life is now dedicated primarily to seniors housing and issues relating to elder care. He was given up for adoption at birth in the 1950's.

In his memoir, Blind in One Eye: A Story About Seeing the Possibilities (FordWords Publishing, 2010), Ford recounts a friend's telling him that she'd spotted his older lookalike on the DC subway. Ford had grown up knowing little about his birth family except that he'd had an older birth brother. As far as Ford knew, his brother was out there somewhere, and Ford wanted to find him. "I had an idealized view about what it would be like to have an older brother, because I grew up as an only child," Ford explains. "My adoptive family was wonderful and supportive, but having an older brother to look up to and to share adventures with was an appealing dream. The subway incident fed into that old fantasy and spurred me to try harder to find that older brother. That's when my search for my birth family began in earnest."

These were the days before Facebook and other social networking tools made it easier for people to connect with one another, and Ford used the investigative skills he'd developed as a legal professional to track down his birth parents. It was an arduous and time-consuming project and, so far, it had yielded only a birth mother who wasn't happy - and, in fact, was downright belligerent - about hearing from the child she'd given away. Ford still hadn't found that older brother, but he hadn't given up the search. In the meantime, just days before his 40th birthday, Ford received an unexpected call from a woman he didn't know. By the end of that phone conversation, he had learned that he was one of seven - not two - children, and that his married, middle-class birth parents had secretly given up four of their children at birth and raised the three others.

"My birth parents' children came in two varieties: there were the 'keepers' and the 'throwaways.' I was a 'throwaway,' and the woman who had called me was another 'throwaway' who had already established a relationship with our birth mother and the other two 'throwaways.' It turned out she'd been looking for me for years, and now - because I'd put out feelers to find our birth family, and my sister had discovered I'd called my birth mother - she had found me. I had an instant sister, and a rapidly expanding group of relatives who would become an important part of my life in the weeks, months, and years to come," recalls Ford.

On the way to developing relationships with six of his seven siblings, Ford laments the few relatives who "got away" from him and couldn't be integrated into his family: along with his reluctant birth mother, there was his silent birth father and one elusive "keeper" sister. "Connecting with my birth siblings has been an overwhelmingly rewarding experience, but it hasn't been exactly what I might have expected. In some ways, it's been far richer than anyone could imagine and, in other ways, it's been tougher, and more puzzling, than I would have believed. It was challenging for my wife, too, who unexpectedly had an entire clan of in-laws to deal with, but she's been terrific. We knew that the search for my birth family could have turned out many ways, and not all of them great, but she encouraged me to keep on."

Ford emphasizes that his birth parents, now deceased, were not anything like Ozzie and Harriet, nor are his birth siblings ever going to be confused with the adorable tykes from the "Brady Bunch," "Full House," or "Cosby" households. "We're not a perfect family that can break out decades-old shared stories the way we might have been able to if our birth parents had decided we were all 'keepers,' and if we had grown up together. But we have each other now, finally, and that's becoming more important to us with each passing day. We are creating memories together despite the long-stalled beginning we had."

All of which brings Ford back to his support for open adoption. "I found my birth family members, largely because of my lawyerly fact-finding skills and plain old good luck and coincidence. But it would have been just as possible for my biological family members to miss the clues that led us to each other, and it would have been a shame if we hadn't been able to meet. I believe that adoptees have a right to know who they are, biologically speaking, and why their birth parents made the decisions to give them up. And I also believe that birth parents have a right to find out what happened to the children they (in many cases) unselfishly gave up for better lives. Open adoption can give adoptees and their birth parents back what they've missed, and I think the time is right to remove the cloak of mystery from the adoption process. Transparency in adoption can change lives for the better as, ultimately, my life was enriched by finding out the truth about my birth family. And also important to me is the fact that now I don't have to scribble the word 'adopted' over the formerly unanswerable questions about my family medical history when I go to a new doctor!"

Blind in One Eye: A Story About Seeing the Possibilities
By David R. Ford
FordWords Publishing
April 2011
www.blindinoneeye.com
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