Is it so wrong? A poem.
Posted by Pushpa on August 2, 2009
A poem that reflects so many adoptees feelings.
Written by my friend Jennie.
Is it so wrong
To speak out
To SCREAM and SHOUT
Rant and rave
Or should we take this pain
To the grave?
Some say it’s just a stage
Something that comes
At a certain age
We can call it anger
But don’t ever call it rage!
Be grateful -
Life could have dealt
A much crueler hand
Better to join with the happy band
And give thanks
What happens then
To the feelings left within
How long shall we pretend
That we’re made of tin?
Always smiling, always happy
To be freed from sin
You are no expert
On our life
Have you lost your family?
Or borne our strife?
Why do you tell us
You hear our pain?
How can you say that
When our loss
Has been your gain?
Now there’s a truth
That’s rarely told
Bet that makes
Your blood run cold
We give you your status
Make you feel whole
Give you a title
Provide your role
It isn’t enough.
You demand more
And we must deliver
Though our hearts are sore
From the loss and grief
Never-ending pain
Real-life nightmares
Which bring you relief
The loss you once felt
Has now gone away
But your bitterness
Remains to this day
And we must pay
For the babies you wanted
But never could have
Why must our wounds
Provide your salve?
You clean us up, dress us up
Give us a new name . . .
Faith, Joy, Charity
Nothing of our identity
Is allowed to remain
That reality must die
To make way
For the cleaner, whiter version
One great, big lie
But our truth carries on
We keep it alive
This charade will soon end
For now, we survive
And when we speak out
When we SCREAM and SHOUT
We won’t hide our pain
No, we won’t feign
Gratitude and happiness
No more concealing
All of our distress
And what do you say
To these powerful words?
Will you call us ungrateful,
Miserable curs?
You who save children
Such angels, what saints!
Shelter yourselves
From such devilish taints
Spoken by those
Who weren’t heaven sent
Have you forgotten
Who we represent?
We are the past
Of the future you hold
What will you say
When THEIR stories
Are told?
Will you attack them,
Call them names?
When they speak out
Will they too be shamed?
No, not again
Not another generation
Stained by the sins
Of lies, secrecy and deceit
We lay that burden at your feet
And heed what we say:
Do not let their young souls
Suffer this way!
You say we’re ungrateful
This isn’t true
The only ingratitude lies within you
We give you our selves
And what do you do?
You tell us stories
Things you suppose
All kinds of fallacy
Of things you’ll never know.
Make-believe stories
Dreamed up in your heads
We cling to these visions
At night, in our beds.
How cruel, how unkind
To tell these tales
To distort young minds!
But you keep on pretending
Cherish the lies you keep
For this is what you need
To help you sleep
Never thinking that your stories
Cause us to weep
What honor does this bring
To the suffering we’ve felt
Can you call this respect
For the lives we’ve been dealt?
How have we been saved?
When it is your souls
Which are so depraved?
You build your stairway to heaven
On the backs of little children
And what of our origin?
The fiber of who we are
The essence of our identity?
What of our kin?
You tell us they are poor
Illiterate, simple, unclean
Dregs of society
Not fit to be seen.
Yet we exist
In their stead
And your hateful words
Echo in our heads
Fill our hearts
With self-loathing
And disgust
Is this respect?
No, this is unjust
You need us to worship you
And we, we are willing
But you won’t accept this
Without first killing
The beauty within
The tie that connects us
To the place you call sin
Angels in adoption
You need such acclaim?
Does these titles help you
Allay your shame
For delivering so little
And telling your lies
In spite of imploring
Innocent eyes
© Pushpa Duncklee and Pushpa’s Blog, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Pushpa Duncklee and Pushpa’s Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
shivani said
i read this poem ad am deepllly shocked…..adoption is not as dark as you make it seem….u r twisted completely i think….what about the parents who took u in, and how do you know your birth kother did not abandon you????
Its such a sad thing for your adoptive parents…..u sure are ungrateful i must say!!!
Prema M. said
Until you have lived a life of an adoptee and have been in the shoes of one, please do not make such judgments. I am sure if your daughter saw your comments she would not be happy. Each adoptee journey should be respected.
shivani said
and why are you still using your adoptive surname…..havet you foud your identity yet???
Prema M. said
Have you found your identity yet? – Well, for your information, how could you ever state such a thing? This is quite sad to read. I am sure once your daughter that you have adopted grows up, she would never want to hear that from you as an adoptive parent.
shivani said
i have a adopted daughter not because she was starvingb,ut coz i wated a daughter….i already have a biological son…my lil one is with me since she was 5 months old..all because her birth mother was an unwed mother..Is it wrong to bring our daughter to our lives…..Is it a s in to love someone…conditionlessly…..i have never had a doubt about adopting her…but your blog is filled with so much hatred …i wish to god my daughter never comes across it….:((((((( It saddens me to know….what happened with you was unfair,considering raeya was at fault here…but you cannot generalise things!!1
Cyndi M. said
Let’s be clear here, Shivani. Adoption on the whole is a great thing. Pushpa was stolen. Abducted. Sold. Torn away from a loving family. She was not given up as an act of love by parents who couldn’t care for her, or taken in because her parents died, or whatever. She has every right to be angry. The miracle is, she really isn’t an angry person. She is kind and loving and putting herself out there in an effort to help others gain understanding and healing. In answer to the questions you could have answered yourself, Pushpa is married, and if you look around you’ll find pictures of her and her loving mother being reunited. Please take the time to read all the way thorough before jumping to (inaccurate and insulting) conclusions.
Cyndi M. said
OH…. and of course, there is the matter of that being a poem that was written by another woman, Jennie….
Jennie said
Shivani, if you are shocked by this poem, then that’s as it should be. This isn’t a feel-good poem, it wasn’t written to make people feel warm and fuzzy. If that’s what you’re looking for, then you should look to the blogs and websites that cater to insecure adoptive parents, who need to be reassured that they’re doing God’s work. The intention was to provoke thought and provide some insight to the experience that some adoptees have had. Not being adopted yourself, you cannot possibly understand this and in being an adoptive parent, it seems to have hit a nerve in you. Sadly, you have chosen to lash out at Pushpa, who isn’t the author of this poem – but is someone who values others and wanted to provide a forum where they could freely express themselves. She is a beautiful soul, with a depth of love and compassion that you seem to have missed in her writing, which is unfortunate for you. Before you choose to attack another adoptive person, first stop and think of your daughter – because the behavior you perpetuate may one day be used against her. How would you feel, to think someone would direct such nastiness toward her? You don’t have to agree with the poem, but I fail to see what you have to gain by labelling Pushpa as ungrateful, twisted and make bizarre insinuations about her surname? It looks like you haven’t read the poem properly, or you would have noticed that Pushpa wasn’t the author.
Quite frankly, you don’t have the right to level judgements against another adopteee, because you haven’t lived their experience. Why are you sharing private details of your daughter’s life with complete strangers and mentioning the marital status of her Mother? That is no one else’s business but hers. As an adoptive parent myself, I will tell you that you are doing your daughter a disservice by writing such information on a public forum. I also pray she never comes across what you have written, because I could imagine it would be deeply upsetting to her, to see the nastiness her Mom has written to a fellow adoptee – which is how she will identify herself. If you love her conditionlessly and she grows up and expresses herself similarly to the poem you read, will you respond to her the same way you have here toward others?
Shivani, I wrote this poem and I take great pride in the fact that it has been a source of comfort for some and has provoked thought in others. I am an adoptee – and an adoptive parent who not only loves her children, but values them and their parents of origin. My greatest hope is that they will grow into fearless, open-hearted, expressive individuals. The kind of people who don’t need to feel grateful that I did my job in parenting them, or that they were “taken in”. The only sadness I feel is knowing that they will encounter closed-minded individuals like yourself, who choose to wear blinders when it comes to adoption, rather than seeing it for the multi-faceted realm that it truly is. Your beliefs and your experiences are just one of countless others and there’s room for everyone’s perspective – but we cannot have understanding through personal attacks and nasty comments.
And for the record, I wrote this under my name given at birth – my identity is well intact, thank you. I give thanks daily, for the incredible life I have and although my adoptive parents have both passed away, I love them as deeply now as I did in life. You were wrong to assume that this poem was about them – in fact, it was inspired by adoptive parents like yourself. They were always proud of my writing talents and would have loved this poem, because they didn’t care for the hero-worship of adoptive parents, either.
In closing, you would do well to LEARN from those who have lived in the adoption world longer than yourself. You have a young child, yet you’ll criticize someone whose entire life has been lived as an adopted person? You have no idea what the adoption world is like – you are just starting out on this journey and have many challenges ahead of you. Rather than attacking others, you could benefit from listening to their experience, because you’re raising an adoptee who might have a myriad of feelings about that and is entitled to each and every emotion.
miriam gaenicke said
Pushpa is a fabulous warm-hearted person and not bitter at all. WE, adoptees, go through an ENORMOUS RANGE OF EMOTIONS. Until you have walked in our shoes, don’t say a thing. Try reading her ENTIRE blog and get the entire story.
Wait till your daughter gets older and things become more complex. Things aren’t always as perfect as they seem. Thank God I have fabulous adoptive parents.
Hats off to Pushpa & her blog! GO PUSHPA!!
Eric McGuire Wenstrom said
As an adoptee who has recently been united with their birthmother as well, Pushpa has helped me go through the emotional rollercoaster with nothing but kind and loving words of support. Shivani, Pushpa knows her backstory, much better than you and to attack her in a public forum is nothing but an act of malice and cowardice. Meeting your birthparent(s) brings you much, much closer to the people that adopt you and opens your eyes up to what could have been had it not been for that great sacrifice that was made on your behalf. If you haven’t experienced it yourself, you will never know the overwhelming sense of gratitude that we feel towards our birthmothers and parents.
desimujer2 said
For the record, my name is also Jennie and I am a transracial/transcultural adoptee, but I’m not the Jennie who wrote this poem. I only wish I could write that eloquently and articulately!
I have read Pushpa’s blog in its entirety and as an adoptee, I have to speak up on her, and Jennie’s, behalf. I remember when a mutual friend gave me the link for Pushpa’s blog and I read it in a few days. It was so engrossing and I really loved reading it! It also made me feel as though I’m not alone in the way I feel–there are others out there who feel the same things as me. Therefore, Shivani, it irritates me to no end when people who are NOT adoptees and have no idea what we go through, not only discredit our feelings, but furthermore, become ABRASIVE and DISRESPECTFUL and accuse us of being “ungrateful.” That is an adoption buzz word that really gets under my skin. Why should we be “grateful,” Shivani?? Because we were taken out of our birth country and placed in a country with people we don’t even know and have never met?? Because some people were STOLEN from their parents because some “well intended” person felt someone else could give them a “better life?” Because some selfish person wants a daughter, and decides she’s going to get one, whatever the cost to the child??!! If you really believe that adoptees should be “grateful” then you have quite a lot to learn. Not only that, but it would behoove you to think before you speak or write–and to educate yourself about adoption, from the ADOPTEES’ perspective. You obviously haven’t even tried to do that and it’s going to be a great disservice and detriment to your daughter, who may one day have the very same feelings about adoption that are articulated in Jennie’s poem. I really hope you will put in the work because you not only owe it to yourself, more importantly, you owe it to your daughter.
Here are links to some blogs written by adoptees. I really hope you read them and don’t attack the writer. The last one is from a birthmother whose baby was stolen from her.
http://yourbloodismyblood.blogspot.com/
http://handpickedhelpingadoptees.blogspot.com/2010/09/in-beginning.html
http://butterflydreams16.wordpress.com/2010/05/19/firstblog/
http://aislin13.wordpress.com/2007/04/21/pictures-and-the-doom-of-me/
Jennie said
From one Jennie to another, thank you very much!
Your words of kindness are very touching. This poem was deeply personal, inspired by situations very similar to this one. Although Shivani was directing her words toward Pushpa, I felt each and every one. Your response and support means so much to me! There was a time when I felt very alone on my journey and I am so grateful to have discovered this isn’t the case. Seeing how many adoptees have come forward here and spoken their truth is a very, very powerful moment.
Thanks also, for the links to all of these blogs. Some of them are new to me and I look forward to reading them.
Jane Marawar said
These women have a right to tell Their stories.We don’t know or live someone else’s experiences. Adoption is a very complicated thing and conflicting feelings can be in one person.The hurt they experience,the losses have suffered,the pressure they feel to be grateful is their truth.As adoptive parents we have to hear that.I know my daughter loves me I also know she has love for biological mother it’s not a competition love is big.Wouldn’t you like to know who you are if you were an adopted person? Doesn’t everyone?They are missing pieces from part of. Their lives that doesn’t mean other parts don’t make them happy.As a Mom face your child’s losses it’s uncomfortable it’s sad because we can’t fix it but if your attitude is wow her life would have been so crappy without us she should be so grateful you are really missing what your daughter needs.