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Adoption issues and music
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Adoption issues and music |
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Subject: Adoption issues and music From: Rick Fielding Date: 07 Jun 99 - 08:06 PM Earlier in another thread I mentioned that Heather(Duckboots) was attending a meeting of the Adoption Council of Ontario tonight, and wouldn't be helping out on the radio show. Three folks have e-mailed me about their experiences finding birth mothers and have asked for information about the show we will be doing on the topic. We're in the process of collecting music that deals with this (from all points of view). I must admit before meeting Heather I had never thought seriously about any aspects of this, and certainly was not aware of the many stresses that can come from this and related situations. I generally have a belief that de-mystifying something often lets others know that they are not alone and that their personal stories although sometimes very sad are not unique. If any catters know of (or have written) songs pertaining to this and would feel comfortable sharing them, we'd be greatful. rick, and heather (born Donna G.) |
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Subject: RE: Adoption issues and music From: campfire Date: 07 Jun 99 - 11:56 PM Rick - There is a local singer/songwriter/performer here in Milwaukee with an adopted daughter. He wrote a song that borrows from an adoption "motto" about "growing not under our hearts, but in it". It isn't really about finding birth families, just about being "special children". To be honest, I don't remember much more of the song, but I can ask him for the words if that's what you're looking for. campfire |
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Subject: RE: Adoption issues and music From: Peter T. Date: 08 Jun 99 - 11:14 AM Rick (and Duckboots), one obvious entry point is Joni Mitchell's history with her daughter -- "Bitter Green" of course being the song that no one knew was about having to give up her daughter for adoption, until she said so just before finding her. It is funny how knowing the story changes the resonance of a song one has listened to for 20 years, but not of course listened to in that way. Itself a modest parallel to the reframing of one's life. It would be interesting to find out if she has written any songs recently about the new phase. Yours, Peter T. |
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Subject: RE: Adoption issues and music From: Rick Fielding Date: 08 Jun 99 - 11:25 AM Yes the Joni Mitchell story about re-connecting with her daughter was very emotional. It's a shame there had to be such publicity surrounding it, but that's the price of having hit records, I guess. The song Bitter Green is a Gordon Lightfoot one though. I'm trying to think of the one Joni wrote for her daughter, it does have a similar title. |
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Subject: RE: Adoption issues and music From: katlaughing Date: 08 Jun 99 - 12:48 PM I don't know much about this issue, even though Rog adopted all three of my kids when they were quite young. I am wondering, though, if any songs were written about the orphan trains of this century, here in the US? There is a very good book by that title "The Orphan Train"; came out in the 70's or 80's and I think was recently made into a tv movie. kat |
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Subject: RE: Adoption issues and music From: Peter T. Date: 08 Jun 99 - 02:17 PM "Little Green", of course, sorry about that (I had GL on my mind answering annap). Here's a copyright piece from the Globe and Mail: Little Green a Little Blue by Michael Posner A year after meeting her birth parents, Joni Mitchell's daughter talks about the cost of finally finding her roots. It was an adopted child's fantasy fulfilled: After searching for five years, Toronto's Kilauren Gibb was last year reunited with her birth parents, Canadian folk-rock icon Joni Mitchell and Toronto photographer Brad MacMath. For Gibb, 33, the experience seemed like a fairy tale. Overnight, she acquired an extended and loving family. Overnight, nagging questions about her origins were resolved. She spent long weeks in Los Angeles, leisurely getting to know Mitchell, sitting by the pool, hanging out with rock stars and celebrities. "I was the fresh princess of Bel Air," she says, alluding to Mitchell's $9-million (U.S.) spread in one of L.A.'s toniest neighbourhoods. But as fairy tales go, Gibb now concedes, this one is slightly flawed. And it may contain some sobering lessons for other adopted children in search of their roots, or perhaps for the recently discovered half-siblings of guitarist Eric Clapton. One year after her widely publicized reunion, Gibb is beginning to come to terms with the darker consequences. Although the emotional benefits have been enormous, they have not been without cost. There was a two-month rupture in relations with her adoptive parents, retired schoolteachers Ida and David Gibb. Her once-close ties to brother David, a Toronto advertising executive, remain strained. A relationship with boyfriend Ted Barrington foundered, in part because of Gibb's frequent trips to L.A. Many of her friends suddenly assumed, mistakenly, that the connection to Mitchell had conferred wealth, and expected Gibb to pick up bar tabs. In fact, she says, "things aren't that great for me financially." Of course, she could easily seek assistance from Mitchell, but "I can't ask. I have too much pride." "Kilauren's got a lot of stuff to deal with," says her new stepmother, Donna Miller, a partner with MacMath in a commercial photography studio. "I feel for her." In exploring these personal horizons, Gibb's own career has been suspended. She finished a desk-top publishing course last year, and her one-bedroom-plus solarium, 20th-floor condominium on Lake Ontario -- paid for with earnings from an earlier modelling career -- now boasts a new $3,000 computer (a birthday present in February from Mitchell). But in recent months she has worked only at odd jobs -- refinishing wooden boats, interior decorating, painting. Most of her time, she says, is spent with her four-year-old son Marlin, the result of an earlier marriage to Toronto drummer Paul Kohler; the two are separated. For a couple months last year, she moved to Vancouver, "trying to be closer to Joni," hoping to find work in films. But the work was hard to come by, and she felt guilty about cutting Marlin's ties to his father. "It just didn't feel right," she says. In short, says Gibb, "it's been a very tough year." And although she speaks to "Joni -- I'm not ready to call her mom yet" -- three or four times a week, and sees her birth father MacMath frequently as well, she has the sense of being pulled emotionally, and simultaneously, in several directions. At one point, she found herself in a hospital emergency ward. The diagnosis: stress. Joni Mitchell, born Roberta Joan Anderson, was just 20 years old, an art-school student in Calgary, when she became pregnant in 1964. Afraid to tell her parents, she fled to Toronto. Her relationship with MacMath ended shortly after. Their daughter, Kelly Dale, was born the following February in a charity hospital. There was an impromptu marriage of convenience to folk singer Chuck Mitchell, but Kelly Dale was soon given up for adoption. As Mitchell explained last year, "I was dirt poor. An unhappy mother does not raise a happy child. It was difficult parting with the child, but I had to let her go." The situation was put more poignantly in Little Green , a song from her 1971 album Blue : "Child, with the child, pretending/ Weary of lies you are sending home/ So you sign all the papers in the family name/ You're sad and you're sorry, but you're not ashamed/ Little Green, have a happy ending." And Little Green did. Renamed Kilauren Andrea Christy Gibb, she grew up in the gaze of loving parents, attended private schools, enjoyed annual vacations in the tropics. Yet for all that, Gibb always felt different from her family, both in looks and in attitudes. From an early age, she felt the urge to travel. At 11, she started to smoke (Mitchell had started at 9). Encouraged to excel academically and athletically (she almost made Canada's Olympic swimming team), she was instinctively drawn more to the arts. At 16, she became a professional model and for 13 years plied catwalks on three continents, partying with the likes of Mick Jagger, Ursula Andress, Rick James and Cornelia Guest among others. It's entirely possible, she says, that she and Mitchell attended the same parties in New York; both lived there in the early eighties. "Our lives paralleled in so many ways. Like Joni, I was really headstrong. My parents didn't like my doing modelling, but nothing could stand in my way. Now, with Marlin, I'm a little more wimpy. I can't run away." It wasn't until Gibb was 27, however -- and pregnant with Marlin -- that she learned what she had long suspected: she had been adopted. The revelation precipitated a full-blown identity crisis. "I longed to know who I was. I wanted so bad to find my mother." Five years later, comparing information from Ontario adoption records with a fan's Joni Mitchell Web site, Gibb made a match. She found her father a few weeks later, as well as a new eight-year-old half-brother, MacMath's son Morgan. "Kilauren and Brad are very much alike," says Miller. "They have the same gait, the same light-hearted attitude to life, the same artistic sensibility. They still giggle when they see each other." Meanwhile, Marlin and his uncle Morgan have become "like cousins." (There's also another still-unlocated half-sister, Sita in California, from MacMath's previous marriage.) The past year has been a whirlwind. In the media madness that followed the news, Gibb felt a little muzzled. "We went on [the Vikki] Gabereau show and no questions were directed toward me. I really wasn't allowed to say anything. Joni had no makeup on, so she wore sunglasses, so then we all had to wear sunglasses." The California experience was in many ways wonderful, she says; Mitchell flew her out with Marlin, first class, on several occasions. She met Graham Nash, an old Mitchell flame, actor Harry Dean Stanton, music legends Herbie Hancock and B. B. King, ZZ Top guitarist Billy Gibbons, singer Etta James and, only a week before his alleged suicide, INXS lead singer Michael Hutchence in a VIP room at Vipers, a celebrity nightclub in L.A. "He was so insecure that he was completely unattractive," Gibb says. "His pupils were huge. 'Stay away,' I thought. 'This guy's trouble.' " "Generally, I fit in quite well in Joni's life," she adds. There were excursions to the beach, dinners at Dan Tana's, a fancy West Hollywood Italian restaurant, days spent painting together with Mitchell. Compared to Los Angeles, Toronto inevitably seemed "a little dead." But in other ways, she says, California "kind of gives me the creeps. The earthquakes. The natural disasters. And I'm not really the star-struck kind. I'm an East Coast girl." I asked Gibb whether she had reconciled herself to Mitchell's original decision to put her up for adoption. "That's an issue," she allowed, "a tough issue. It's hard to tread there. I think she [Mitchell] really has a guilty feeling about that." On the other hand, Gibb is grateful for the upbringing she had. "I keep trying to reassure them [Ida and David] that I love them, that they did a great job, that they're not going to lose me. I don't know what I'd have become if I'd been raised like a Bel Air brat." At one point last year, Gibb engineered two other emotionally charged meetings. The first, at Toronto's Donalda Club, introduced her adoptive parents to Mitchell. "Everyone was a little nervous," she says, "but it had to be done." The second, in a Yorkville bistro, reunited Mitchell and MacMath for the first time in 32 years. "They were blushing," says Gibb. "Radiant. It was like they were back in school. I took pictures." According to Donna Miller, "Brad was worried about meeting Joni. He thought he might hate her or something. But it went really well. He felt really protective about her." Now, back in Toronto, Kilauren Gibb is contemplating her options, "striving to find a little regularity." She wants to do more acting. She'd like to write a book about her story. A few familial fences still need mending, including one with her brother David, forced to keep the secret of her adoption for many years. And she'd like to organize a trip to Saskatoon, to see Mitchell's parents, Bill and Myrtle Anderson, now in their 80s. "I have some bad days," Gibb admits. "I feel like I don't get enough time with Joni. She's very busy." (Mitchell is about to embark on a West Coast tour with Bob Dylan, and a new album, Taming the Tiger , is expected out this summer.) "But everything's fine, really," she says, packing for a weekend trip to the country with Marlin and her old boyfriend. "It just needs a little readjustment." From the Globe and Mail - April 11, 1998
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Subject: RE: Adoption issues and music From: Mike Regenstreif Date: 08 Jun 99 - 09:00 PM Some moving songs on the subject include: "Mother" by Tom Paxton, written from the point of view of an adoptee who goes on to be an adoptive mother herself. "Someone Who Looks Like Me" by Mary McCaslin, which Mary (who was adopted) wrote about wanting to find her birth mother. "Rider On An Orphan Train" by David Massengill, which David wrote from the p.o.v. of an orphan searching for his brother who was adopted by a different family. Mike Regenstreif |
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Subject: RE: Adoption issues and music From: catspaw49 Date: 09 Jun 99 - 02:05 AM Rick, As you're aware our children are adopted and Karen and I have been active in adoption issues for many years now. For so long, as was the case with Mitchell's daughter, the "secrecy" of adoption resulted in many of the problems. This is turning around, but not nearly fast enough. Children adopted as infants do far better if they know the truth, in age appropriate terms, as they grow. I am extremely troubled by the many private adoptions that are handled through attorneys and some other services who provide you with a child for 10 grand, and the kid comes with a guarantee!!! To hell with the birthmother, they think she has no need to know what happens to her child........this subject makes my blood pressure skyrocket!!! We have had over 25 kids in foster care......SEVEN have been the product of failed "infant" adoptions!!!!!! And do you have any idea how many older children and special needs children are waiting? Worse, do you know the odds for success in many of these? Everyone needs to be involved in the adoptive process...bio parents (both if possible) and their families, adoptive parents and their families, and the CHILD (or children). It takes an unbelievable amount of courage to create an adoptive plan for your baby. It takes special training and a different mindset to be an adoptive parent......it's not the same as being a bio-parent. Damn....I could go on and on with this subject, but you're looking for songs and I don't have any to add, you've already got some good ones, especially Mitchell and Paxton. But adoption does not have to be a tragedy. It can work out well. Brief story----Michael came to us at about 9 months of age and we worked very hard with his birthmom to reunite. When this was not accomplishable, we gained permanent custody and finalized the adoption just prior to his third birthday. We were the only home Michael ever knew and his birthmom's life was so unstable that she felt it was best too. But she came to us just prior to the adoption and said, "I know I might never get it together, but if I do, do you think I can get Michael back?" I said, "No Becky, but you're welcome to come to our house anytime and visit. You'll always be part of Mike's life and you'll always be part of ours too." Unfortunately we have not seen her since. But we have pictures and good stories for Michael...and perhaps she will come around some day. For all of our sakes, I hope so. Karen's Mom and I'm Dad, but Becky is a part of it too.....We owe her much for giving us a very wonderful little boy, the light of his Daddy's life. Hope she calls some day ... knowing can help her too. catspaw |
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Subject: RE: Adoption issues and music From: Barbara Date: 09 Jun 99 - 06:42 AM We adopted our daughter at birth through an open adoption agency. Through her life we have maintained contact with her birth family. In our life they are relatives -- it's a lot like getting married - you have a whole new set of people to get to know that go with the one you love. We do birthdays, holidays, overnights, and various gatherings with her birth mom, half sister, birth mom's sig other, cousins, and grandparents. Her birthfather makes himself more scarce but it's his choice, not ours. (He's Vietnamese and married). Lin is currently bummed 'cause her family had to cancel tickets for Wizard of Oz and then couldn't get in another night (we sold out). It asks more of us, perhaps, to share Lin this way, and it's good for us all. I really like the arrangement and wouldn't ever change it. To my mind, this is how adoption should work, and, Gosh, Rick, I know I should write a song about it, but I haven't yet. Blessings, BArbara
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Subject: RE: Adoption issues and music From: sharon Date: 09 Jun 99 - 12:32 PM John McCutcheon sings a wonderful song on one of his CD's, "Happy Adoption Day." |
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Subject: RE: Adoption issues and music From: Rick Fielding Date: 09 Jun 99 - 02:33 PM Thanks Mike, for the songs. And thanks folks for the stories and songs. When Heather first told me she was adopted and had always felt uneasy about "who she was", I'm sorry to say that I underplayed her concerns. Having worked a year for The Children's Aid Society in Toronto, I saw horror stories, that sometimes made it near impossible to go to the bar that night and sing "happy songs". When you are dealing with kids who have been so badly used by supposed adults, and part of your job involves trying to "re-integrate" these kids into those same families who did the "using", it can literally make you sick to your stomach. I would gladly have sterilized many of these "parents" and that's just not the way I normally think. I guess I was just unqualified to be that close to the situation. I did a lot of reading in order to try and help Heather through her dilemma, which was a desire to find her "roots" while not wanting to appear "disloyal" to the fine family who raised her. It's been quite an odyssey, and maybe she might tell something about it in the post. But thanks a lot to the cats who've contributed. rick |
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Subject: RE: Adoption issues and music From: Philippa Date: 09 Jun 99 - 05:37 PM I'm glad to hear the stories about 'open adoption'. I too think that's how the system should ideally work. It won't suit all circumstances, but should be the norm rather than the exception. Can we have lyrics to some of the songs mentioned? |
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Subject: RE: Adoption issues and music From: Susanne (skw) Date: 09 Jun 99 - 06:54 PM Sheena Wellington sings a song by John McCreadie written from the point of view of a single mother who was persuaded to give her child away at birth. Very moving. I'll post it some time. - Susanne |
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Subject: RE: Adoption issues and music From: Duckboots Date: 10 Jun 99 - 07:21 PM Please excuse me for not thanking the posters in the last couple of days. I've been wearing my "Duckboots" hat and trying to get rid of 10 million infernal small "seed pods" (or something) that have floated down from a tree and enveloped my little garden. One of the really positive things that happened to me after making contact with my birth mother has been getting to know my half/sister, and becoming an "instant aunt". Just as with my adoptive family, the relationships are "long distance" and mostly carried out over the phone, but a couple of years ago she came to Canada (from Coventry) for a visit, and I was amazed at how similar we are in so many ways. Being an only child, whose folks died young, I think Rick has approached this rediscovery of my roots thing from a bit of a vicarious position. Heather |
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Subject: RE: Adoption issues and music From: Jeremiah McCaw Date: 11 Jun 99 - 04:18 AM Got one for you, Rick. Brantford singer/songwriter Don McGeoch has one on his 2nd CD ("Doon Yonder Den"). The song is called "All You Ever Wanted" and he wrote it about emmigration from the UK, a multitude of street waifs sent over to Canada for adoption. I believe the time frame is the turn of the century, or earlier. If perchance you don't have access to this one, lemme know; I'll loan you mine.
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Subject: Lyr Add: WHERE ARE YOU NOW MY SON?^^ From: Susanne (skw) Date: 13 Jun 99 - 07:20 PM I'm thinking that you're growing, lad - where are you now, my son? I'm thinking that you're growing, lad - where are you now, my son? I'm thinking that you're growing, lad, it's years since I saw your dad Where are you now, where are you now? Where are you now, my son?
They said it was the best for you - where are you now, my son?
They said you'd need a family - where are you now, my son?
I only wanted you to know - where are you now, my son?
[1990:] This moving evocation of the feelings of a mother who has given her child up for adoption was written, with great empathy and sensitivity, by John McCreadie [...]. For Bernadette. (Notes Sheena Wellington, 'Clearsong')
The words on their own do not amount to much, perhaps, but combined with the melancholy tune the song grows on you. Sorry I still haven't learned to post tunes. - Susanne |
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Subject: RE: Adoption issues and music From: Rick Fielding Date: 14 Jun 99 - 12:28 AM Thanks Jeremiah, I've heard it and it's a good song. Susanne, that's beautiful. I'm going to hunt the recording down. |
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Subject: RE: Adoption issues and music From: adult child Date: 06 Sep 99 - 01:30 PM refresh - and add some lyrics please |
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