Forbidden Family has been taken off the market by Trafford Publishing in May of 2011.
It was a short run, but well worth it.
I believe in my book and future success.
The book is not dead; only sleeping while another opportunity is sought.
This photograph of my natural family was taken in Autum of 1955. My mother is pregnant with me.
This is the only family “portrait” I have.
My deceased natural mother’s sister (my aunt) sent the photograph to my adoptive aunt
who then gave the photograph to my adoptive parents in 1956.
My adoptive mother gave me the photograph when I was 18 years old
and newly reunited with my natural family.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
This is a work of non-fiction; the events are entirely true to the best recollection of the author. Nothing is imagined or fabricated. Most names, some places and other identifying information have been changed. Some names used by permission. Names of deceased people are real names, names of celebrities and public people are real names. There are no composite characters. Events and conversations are written without embellishment from memory, notes, eyewitnesses, tape recordings, letters, and documented research. Some very traumatic events have been omitted.
The photograph used on back cover was approved for publication by a literary attorney because I own the photo, and when the book was published the identities of the people were not made public, and the photograph is blurred with printed words over it. No permissions were needed to use this photograph. Now, both parents are deceased and the children cannot be recognized as the mid-life adults they are today. My mother is pregnant with me: this is our family portrait. This photograph is referred to many times in the book. This is my Forbidden Family.
All content was reviewed by a literary attorney several times over a seven year period of writing the final manuscript: once with my natural father sitting in the same room.
My natural father and step mother reviewed the book and added their input to the final manuscript. My adoptive mother declined to read the entire manuscript, but read several chapters, and added her input into her realization that adoptees’ amended birth certificates do not state the truth. My adoptive father passed away many years ago so he did not get the chance to add his input.
The three full blood sisters (not my brothers) who found me do not approve that I wrote a book about my life because they feel they are portrayed in a bad light. I wrote my book in reflection of what happened to me, good and bad. I did not identify people. I told what they did to me and the effects of the collective harassment and bullying and mocking I have lived through. The reunion broke down because of disagreements; for them to continue bullying me, slandering and libeling me is morally wrong.
My blood kin sisters have recently banded together to write their own blogs spreading filthy lies about me, saying that I am actively harming them by bullying them. I am not. Just because they say I am does not mean their statements are true. They are doing this all themselves. They let the world know they were in the book because they identified themselves. They are the ones bashing me. As instructed by the police and by WordPress and by my own website’s tech support, I have written a blog calling for my sisters to Cease and Desist their cruel behavior. Please see the following blog for my statements defending myself: http://cyberbulliesstalkers.blogspot.com/. There are no cyberbullying laws in New York State so I cannot call law enforcement for protection. I have been the victim of harassment and bullying from my three sisters for many decades. They have taken disagreements to the extreme.
I have no contact whatsoever with the three sisters who found me. They are mean and unstable people. I want only positive and loving people in my life. My sisters have caused a great deal of torment in my life, but they are not the focus of my reunion nor my life. I, alone, am the adoptee. My book is about my life and how adoption affected me and my immediate adoptive family, my now ex-husband, and our children.
More Than a Memoir
This is a MEMOIR and an EXPOSE. I report what happened to all of my parents and siblings, to me, and later, my now ex-husband and our children. I have been the target of negative social stigma simply because of my status as a reunited adoptee and adoption reform activist. In telling my story chronologically and giving my analysis of the events in my life, I also present clear evidence of my government-imposed sealed and falsified birth certificates, as well as my true and then falsified baptismal records. This leads into my recommendations for positive social and legal change.
Included in this book:
Scanned images (minus names of living people and document numbers) of my: “original” TRUE birth certificates (short form and long form and hospital birth certificate); and ”new” “amended” FALSE birth certificates (short and long forms), and TRUE baptismal certificate and FALSE baptismal certificate from the same Catholic Parish Church; and Final Order of Adoption. I will also present what my ADOPTION CERTIFICATE might look like should the government decide to tell the truth in adoption. Nothing new in that idea – many other countries have accurate birth and adoption certificates open to adoptees and their natural parents.
NOTE: no real names of living people are used in the book, except my own, and two by permission.
Real names of all of my parents are now used in this website because they are my parents, and they all now are deceased.
Q & A
How did I get my sealed birth and adoption records when they are sealed from me to this day? My father gave them to my pre-adoptive parents when he relinquished me to them.
Why are birth certificates important to adoptees? Because non-adoptees can get their birth certificates, adoptees cannot. Adoptees’ legal birth certificates are fiction. We are prevented from access to our true birth certificates by antiquated laws meant to hide illegitimacy.
Why is my birth certificate sealed and falsified when I was conceived and born within a marriage? Because I am an adoptee.
Why am I, a half orphan, prevented from accessing and obtaining a certified copy of my true birth certificate? No attorney, no legislator, no priest, no therapist has been able to answer this question with any substantial reason. I have the same two natural parents as my four older siblings do. They can get their birth certificate and I cannot get mine. No, this is not a sibling-rivalry issue, nor do I want them involved in something that is not their issue. This is a legal issue and a civil rights issue. Out of 36 half orphans (that I know of) within my extensive interdependent web of relatives, I am the only one to have been relinquished and then adopted. This, too, is detailed in my book.
My identity and my birth certificate were changed BY adoption. In every other respect, I am a citizen of a free country, but as an adoptee, I am not equal to non-adoptees. I stand with at least 6 or 7 million other natural-born citizen adoptees in the United States who are not equal to non-adoptees. Foreign-born adoptees brought into the United States have other issues, which is also discussed in my book.
Adoptees want access to obtain what all other people can obtain by asking and paying a processing fee. In my book, I take this even further: Why are adoptees’ birth certificates allowed to be falsified? If all we (adoption reformers) fight for is access to our sealed birth records, we may achieve that goal for ourselves, even though our fight for equal civil rights is decades long. However, access to our sealed birth certificates is just part of the whole civil rights issue. We need to recognize that access to our birth certificates is our current fight, but we need to stop the cycle from repeating. We need to prevent the practice of sealing adoptees’ true birth certificates and prevent the practice of falsifying birth certificates for adoptees. If we do not stop these two processes, new adoptees will still suffer indignations in a never-ending cycle of waiting decades for what non-adopted free United States citizens have: access on demand for their true, unsealed, birth certificates.
Stop sealing and falsifying birth and adoption records. It is that simple. This idea is developed within my book as I present a detailed proposed federal law.
The practice of falsifying birth certificates for adoptees needs to be replaced with issuing Factual Adoption Certificates that record the facts of adoption. It is that simple.
To briefly illustrate what is fully re-printed in my book, here are zoomed-in excerpts of three key documents of my adoption, and birth, and false record of birth:
Zoom-In close-up of my sealed, three-page Final Order of Adoption: Note that my full name at birth is indicated and my full new name is indicated:
Zoom-in close-up of my long-form true birth certificate. Yes, I have it. No, I cannot freely request and obtain a copy of it. It is in my possession because of my unusual circumstances:
Zoom-in close-up of my legal, long-form, falsified birth certificate. This is a false record of birth. No hospital records are filed for this “birth”, yet the hospital is named, single birth is checked, the date and time of my real birth is listed, but this birth is fictitious. This “birth” did not factually happen:
Yes, this happens for every adoptee in the United States, past and present.
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My Natural Parents, Genevieve and Leonard, in a photo booth in Niagara Falls, New York, USA, circa 1944
My Adoptive Parents, Doloris and Edward, in the same photo booth in 1938.
