Suche in internationalen Adoptionen durch Experten für Adoptierte

On April 23, ICAV will be providing a webinar on some of the complex issues involved in searching in various birth countries, but with specific knowledge of Colombia, Ethiopia, Vietnam, Greece, Korea, and Sri Lanka.

Our webinar will be unique in that we are not only bringing our lived experience as individuals, but also presenting as a global resource, highlighting the adoptee led organisations who provide a formal search and support services. Our panelists hold the dual role of knowing intuitively how complex searching is as individuals having done their own searching and also having decades of experience in providing formal search and support services to the community.

ICAV knows intuitively what the latest research (p231) conducted within the Korean adoptee community shows – i.e.,, that intercountry adoptees find their peers and adoptee led organisations to be the most helpful in their searches. There’s nothing better than those who live it knowing intuitively how to best provide the services we need as a community.

If you’d like to be part of our audience, click here to RSVP.

Our 8 panelists are:

Marcia Engel

Marcia is the creator and operator of Engel planen, a nonprofit human rights foundation currently based in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Her organization has a powerful mission: helping Colombian families find their children who were lost to child trafficking and adoption.

For fifteen years now, Plan Angel has grown a strong community with over 1,000 families in Colombia. The foundation helps these families search for their missing adopted children all over the world, hoping to one day reconnect them with each other. Marcia and her foundation have reunited hundreds of families and continue to support them after their reunion.

Linda Carol Forrest Trotter

Linda is a Greek-born adoptee, adopted by American parents and found her biological family in Greece five and a half years ago. She is the founder and president of Das Eftychia-Projekt, a nonprofit organization that assists and supports, free of charge, Greek-born adoptees searching for their roots and Greek families searching for their children lost to adoption.

In addition to its Search and Reunion program, the Eftychia Project, in collaboration with the MyHeritage DNA company, distributes DNA kits for free to adoptees and Greek families. To date, The Eftychia Project has facilitated the reconnections of 19 adoptees with their Greek families.

The Eftychia Project also actively advocates on behalf of all Greek-born adoptees with the Greek government for their birth and identity rights, including transparency about their adoptions, unfettered access to their birth, orphanage and adoption records, and the restoration of their Greek citizenship.

Kayla Curtis

Kayla is born in South Korea and adopted to South Australia. Kayla has been searching for her Korean birth family for over twenty years. She returned to Korea to do ‘on the ground’ searching using posters, newspapers, local police, and adoptee search organisations. In the absence of having a reunion with birth family, she has built a meaningful relationship with her birth country and Korean culture and proudly identifies as Korean-Australian.

In her professional life, Kayla works as a Senior Counsellor for the Internationaler Adoptiv- und Familienunterstützungsdienst (ICAFSS) at Relationships Australia.

Kayla is a qualified Therapeutic Life Story Worker and has a Master’s in Social Work as well as extensive experience working in the area of adoption both in government and non-government, providing counselling, education and training, community development and post adoption support. In this role, Kayla supports intercountry adoptees with searching and navigating this uncertain and complex process between countries, as well as offering therapeutic support to adoptees, on this journey.

Trista Goldberg

Trista Goldberg is an international DNA influencer, DNA consultant and founder of Operation Reunite after finding her Vietnamese birth family in 2001. Trista used DNA to verify her family’s biological connection and verified that she was half Vietnamese and half American.

Over the last 20 plus years she helped make DNA mainstream. Operation Reunite became the beta pilot group that launched the autosomal DNA test in 2010. The miracles she has seen in her lifetime has been magnetised with DNA.

Trista believes there are so many blessings when you really know who you are and where you came from. She understands the value of expanding the adoptee network, sharing and educating how we can harness the technology of DNA to help our community.

Benoît Vermeerbergen

Benoît was born in Villers-Semeuse, France under “Sous X”. This means that his parents and especially his mother did not want to be known or found. His birth certificate literally only shows X’s as parents’ names. Growing up Benoît had a lot of questions trying to understand all of this. After his studies, he purposely began working for the ‘Population Services’ in the hope of discovering more information about his birth mother.

During this process and the years that followed, Benoît helped so many other people in their search (for example, trying to find their biological birth parents), that he made genealogical research his main source of income. It has always been and will always be his greatest passion in life!

Genealogy and adoption therefore are his field of specialisation. In the past couple of years he has also started working in the field of ‘DNA’. In 2019, he found his biological mother through this method. Today, he cooperates with a lot of genealogical and adoption related authorities (for example, he works at Afstammingscentrum in Belgium) and helps to invent and build many adoption related platforms. Although Belgium is his home country, he also has experience in doing research abroad, i.e. Australia, Mexico, and The Netherlands.

Rebecca Payot

Rebecca is the founder of the association Racines Naissent des Ailes and co-founder of Emmaye Adoptee’s Family Reunion. Adopted in Ethiopia at the age of 5, Rebecca is a graduate in early childhood psychology specialising in adolescents in identity crisis. She has worked for 20 years in international adoption in France as a consultant and speaker on quest of origins. She is the author of her first book entitled “The Quest of Origins, a Miracle Remedy for the ills of the adopted?”

Hilbrand Wester

Hilbrand is a Korean adoptee raised in the Netherlands and has the longest track record, working with and for adoptees in the Netherlands since 1989. Internationally, his name is well known and disputed at the same time by the first generation of intercountry adoptees because he dared to oppose the Disney fairytale of adoption. He is also the first adoptee in the world to receive an official Royal decoration by the King of the Netherlands in 2015 and is Knighted in the Order of Orange Nassau for outstanding work for adoptees and in the field of adoption.

In daily life, Hilbrand runs his own school in systemic work and is a renowned teacher and trainer nationally and his work has sparked great interest in the UK. He spends time bridging the work in this field between the Netherlands and the UK. Hilbrand is a confidant and executive coach for leaders and directors in the Netherlands and also works partly with the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science.

Celin Fässler

Celin is adopted from Sri Lanka to Switzerland and is the Communications Manager and Board Member at Zurück zu den Wurzeln. Back to the Roots is a Swiss NGO founded in 2018 by Sri Lankan adoptees. Its main goal is to raise awareness of the complex search for origins and to support adoptees in their searching process. Since May 2022, Back to the Roots has been funded by the Swiss government and the regional districts in order to provide professional support to adoptees from Sri Lanka to Switzerland.

Sarah Ramani Ineichen

Sarah is adopted from Sri Lankan to Switzerland and is the President of Back to the Roots and may present jointly with Celin in this webinar.

The webinar will be recorded and made available at ICAVs website.

If you have questions you’d like to see addressed in our webinar, please add your comments to this blog or Kontakt us.

Huge thanks to the Australian Government, DSS for funding this event via our Relationships Australia, Small Grants & Bursaries program.

Oktober 5, 2022Oktober 1, 2022

Selbstmord unter Adoptierten

von Hilbrand Wester, born in South Korea and adopted to the Netherlands, founder of Adoptee & Foster Care (AFC) Netherlands

ATTENTION TO SUICIDE AMONGST ADOPTEES

Five times higher than average

Hardly anyone really wants to know, and people don’t talk about it easily, let alone the adoptees’ attention when it happens. Usually the attention goes to the #adoptiveparents and the adoptees are often alone in the rain.

Last week was the book launch of adoptive mother Rini van Dam’s book #donderdagen in Sneek. Speakers’ introductions rightly focused on the author, of course, but one of the topics why the book was created was Sannison’s death. A fellow Korean adoptee who ended her life before she was 17 and her funeral service was on November five, my birthday. She had just broken up with a fellow adoptee shortly before. It was 1991, the year when association for adopted Koreans, Arierang, held its first major national meeting. The year where loves both blossomed and burst apart. The year I became aware of what and pain and sorrow lurked beneath us all.

Two years later, Julia, a Korean adoptee from Belgium who left life just before she turned 21, died and her funeral service was on 5 November, my birthday. Her adoptive parents, however, did not want adoptees at the funeral service.

A few years later, I would lose my own sister, Joo Min, while stationed as a UN soldier in Bosnia. We don’t really know why she chose to save two boys in their fall in the French Italian Alps when she must have known it would be fatal for her herself.

Yesterday, I was reminded of the above. A painful but perhaps the most necessary confrontation with my personal history to learn through this hard road that I could no longer look away from my inner development. Since then, I have been working hard for the suffering of adoptees around the world. But instead of praise and support, I received threats and angry adoptive parents in my path. Some even threatened to want to kill me. But angry adoptees and #scientists, especially from the Netherlands, also tried to take my message off the air. Until the Swedish research by Anders Hjern, Frank Lindblad, Bo Vinnerljung came out in 2002 and substantiated my experiences and suspicions.

Existential trauma to suicide shows a relationship with the tearing process created by relinquishment and #adoption. Since then, such outcomes have surfaced all over the world except in the Netherlands. The Netherlands still likes to indulge in the Walt Disney story and any contrary noise about this phenomenon is conveniently dismissed by statistical research, which, although Evidence Based accredited, manages to conveniently dismiss this issue.

Science prefers to leave the suffering of many adoptees to themselves because what doesn’t show up in the statistics doesn’t exist according to the government and adoption agencies.

Original in Dutch

AANDACHT VOOR #ZELFDODING ONDER #GEADOPTEERDEN

Vijf keer hoger dan gemiddeld

Bijna niemand wil het echt weten, en men spreekt er niet makkelijk over, laat staan dat de geadopteerden de aandacht krijgen als het gebeurt. Meestal gaat de aandacht naar de #adoptieouders en staan de geadopteerden vaak alleen in de regen.

Gisteren was de boekuitreiking van het boek #donderdagen van adoptiemoeder Rini van Dam in Sneek. De inleidingen van sprekers waren natuurlijk terecht gericht op de schrijfster, maar een van de onderwerpen waarom het boek is ontstaan is de dood van Sannison. Een mede Koreaanse geadopteerde die voor haar 17e een eind maakte aan haar leven en haar rouwdienst was op vijf november, mijn verjaardag. Ze had kort daarvoor net de prille verkering met een medegeadopteerde uitgemaakt. Het was 1991, het jaar dat vereniging voor geadopteerde Koreanen, Arierang, haar eerste grote landelijke bijeenkomst achter de rug had. Het jaar waar zowel liefdes opbloeiden, maar ook uit elkaar spatten. Het jaar dat ik mij gewaar werd welk en pijn en verdriet onder ons allen schuil ging.

Twee jaar later, overleed Julia, een Koreaanse geadopteerde uit België die net voor haar 21e het leven verliet en haar rouwdienst was op vijf november, mijn verjaardag. Haar adoptieouders echter wilden geen geadopteerden bij de rouwdienst.

Enkele jaren later zou ik mijn eigen zus, Joo Min, verliezen terwijl ik gestationeerd was als VN soldaat in Bosnië. We weten niet echt waarom ze verkoos om twee jongens in hun val in de Frans Italiaanse Alpen te redden terwijl ze geweten moet hebben dat het haar zelf noodlottig zou worden.

Gisteren werd ik aan het bovenstaande herinnerd. Een pijnlijke, maar wellicht de meest noodzakelijke confrontatie met mijn persoonlijke historie om via deze harde weg te leren dat ik niet langer weg kon kijken van mijn innerlijke ontwikkeling. Sindsdien heb ik mij hard gemaakt voor het leed van geadopteerden over de hele wereld. Maar inplaats van lof en ondersteuning ontving ik bedreigingen en boze adoptieouders op mijn pad. Sommigen dreigden mij zelfs om te willen brengen. Maar ook boze geadopteerden en #wetenschappers, vooral uit Nederland, probeerden mijn boodschap uit de lucht te halen. Totdat het Zweedse onderzoek van Anders Hjern, Frank Lindblad, Bo Vinnerljung in 2002 uitkwam en mijn ervaringen en vermoedens staafde.

Het existentiële trauma tot zelfdoding laat een relatie zien met het verscheurende proces dat ontstaat door afstand en #adoptie. Sindsdien zijn over de hele wereld dergelijke uitkomsten opgedoken behalve in Nederland. Nederland laaft zich nog graag aan het Walt Disney verhaal en elk tegengesteld geluid over dit fenomeen wordt handig weggewerkt door statistisch onderzoek, dat weliswaar Evidence Based geaccrediteerd is, maar dit onderwerp handig weet weg te werken.

De wetenschap laat het lijden van veel geadopteerden liever aan henzelf over want wat niet in de statistieken opduikt bestaat niet volgens de overheid en de hulpverlening.

Ressourcen

ICAVs Memorial Page with Suicide Awareness links and other resources on this topic

Juli 24, 2022Juli 23, 2022

Warum schweigen niederländische Adoptiveltern massenhaft?

von Hilbrand Wester, born in South Korea and adopted to the Netherlands; founder of Adoptee & Foster Care (AFC) Netherlands

An international headache

Adoption is political! Last week there was an Artikel in the Dutch newspaper Trouw by Sam van den Haak. The headline and subtext state:

Support adopted children who are looking for their own parents with a fund
Parents spend tens of thousands of euros to adopt a child. But if adopted children want to find their own parents, there is no money for that. That’s not right, thinks Sam van den Haak, who was adopted from Sri Lanka herself.

It is hopeful to see that since 1989 where I was very involved by providing my critical input to counterbalance adoption debates, more and more adoptees are today emerging who seem to follow in these footsteps. And although I have withdrawn from this shadowy, and at times dangerous, political domain of adoption, I must nevertheless make a comment about the constant protection of adoptive parents by many of these adoptees. These adoptive parents are silent every time and it seems that they are once again sitting out this ‘storm’.

But where Van den Haak talks about prospective parents, it is actually about her adoptive parents at the same time. And it is actually not entirely true that adoptive parents were not aware, or could have been, that there might have been a lot wrong with intercountry adoption (the legal jargon for overseas international adoptions).

A prospective parent who had studied the matter could have known that in most cases there was at least a scent of something not right to it. Now it is mainly shifted by them to governments and adoption mediators – these are organizations that are remarkably often set up by and for adoptive parents.
#STOCKHOLMSYNDROOM

I understand that many adoptees do not wish to criticize their adoptive parents because in many cases that is their last straw to cling to when it comes to a tangible family to belong within. But without these 30,000 adoptive parents in the Netherlands, we would not have the consequences we now see. And if all those adoptive parents did indeed mean well with us, why do they always remain silent en masse and refuse to seek redress from the Dutch government and force it to make better provisions for adoptees who are impacted?

In the meantime, the Ministry of Justice set up an operation smokescreen by organizing a so-called “national consultation” that cost thousands of euros with external consultants who had done little to no preliminary research to create the idea that there would be unbiasedness and room for participation. During one of those first rounds in Utrecht, I already outlined the outcome. The ministry dismissed that as incorrect and premature. Hundreds of hours were in it for participants in these meetings, but in the end I was right. No money for adoptees for things as Van den Haak advocates, but a questionable counter function for post adoption support.

The entire operational execution and money goes to the FIOM in Den Bosch (ISS Netherlands), which also has a questionable reputation in the adoption history by being one of the early facilitators of intercountry adoption.

The whole exercise of the Ministry of Justice could have saved us wasting effort and the money involved could have gone to adoptees. But as is often the case, logic is lacking on these types of cases, and that frustrates many adoptees.

In a personal capacity, Hilbrand Westra

Original Dutch

ADOPTIE IS #POLITIEK (Tammy Chu)
Een internationaal hoofdpijn dossier

Vanochtend stond er een artikel over #adoptie in dagblad Trouw van Sam van den Haak.

Het is hoopvol om te zien dat er sinds (1989) mijn kritische tegenwicht in het adoptiedebat, steeds meer geadopteerden opstaan die in deze voetsporen lijken te volgen. En alhoewel ik mij uit dit schimmige, en bij tijden gevaarlijke, politieke domein van adoptie teruggetrokken heb, moet ik toch een kanttekening plaatsen bij het telkens in bescherming nemen van #adoptieouders door veel van deze #geadopteerden. Deze adoptieouders zwijgen telkens als het graf en het lijkt erop dat ze deze ‘storm’ wederom uitzitten.

Maar waar Van den Haak het over wensouders heeft, gaat het eigenlijk tegelijkertijd over haar #adoptieouders. En het klopt feitelijk ook niet helemaal dat adoptieouders niet op de hoogte waren, of hadden kunnen zijn dat er wellicht van alles mis was met interlandelijke adoptie, het juridische jargon voor overzeese internationale adopties.
Een beetje wensouder die zich verdiept had in de materie had kunnen weten dat er in de meeste gevallen er op z’n minst een luchtje aan zat. Nu wordt het door hen vooral afgeschoven op overheden en adoptiebemiddelaars. Organisaties die opvallend genoeg vaak juist zijn opgezet door en vanuit adoptieouders. Hoe dan?

#STOCKHOLMSYNDROOM

Ik snap wel dat vele geadopteerden als de dood zijn om hun adoptieouders te bekritiseren. Want dat is in veel gevallen wel hun laatste strohalm als het om een tastbaar #gezin gaat. Maar zonder deze 30.000 adoptieouders in Nederland zaten we nu niet met de gevolgen. En als al die adoptieouders het inderdaad zo goed met ons gemeend hadden, waarom zwijgen ze dan telkens massaal en weigeren ze bij de Nederlandse overheid verhaal te halen en deze te dwingen betere voorzieningen te treffen voor geadopteerden?

Intussen werd er door het Ministerie van Justitie een operatie rookgordijn opgezet door een zogeheten landelijk overleg te organiseren wat duizenden euro’s koste met externe consultants die nauwelijks tot geen vooronderzoek hadden gedaan om de zweem te creëren dat er sprake zou zijn van onbevooroordeeldheid en ruimte voor medezeggenschap. Tijdens een van die eerste rondes in Utrecht, schetste ik de uitkomst al. Door het ministerie werd dat weggewuifd als incorrect en te voorbarig. Honderden uren zaten er in voor deelnemers aan deze bijeenkomsten, maar uiteindelijk kreeg ik gelijk. Geen geld voor geadopteerden voor zaken zoals Van den Haak bepleit, maar een twijfelachtige loketfunctie voor adoptienazorg.
De hele operationele uitvoering en geld gaat naar het Fiom in Den Bosch dat ook een discutabele reputatie in de adoptiegeschiedenis er op nahoudt.

De hele exercitie van het MVJ had ons dus bespaart kunnen blijven en het geld wat daarmee gemoeid ging naar geadopteerden kunnen gaan. Maar zoals wel vaker, logica ontbreekt op dit soort dossiers, en dat frustreert menige geadopteerde.

Op persoonlijke titel, Hilbrand Westra

Februar 27, 2021Februar 27, 2021

The Problem of Western Adoption Discourse

von Hilbrand Wester, adopted from South Korea to the Netherlands; founder of Adoptee Foster Coaching (AFC); awarded the Order of Orange-Nassau for his contributions to the Netherlands adoptee community. The original text in Dutch Hier.

#Adoption is not a universal right, but it is a Western right.

If adoption is really and essentially good, then we must allow adoptions in and from all countries. The principles for adopting children (social, economic, medical, ideological, psychological, (post) Christian, scientific and political motives, etc.,) must then be applicable and legally valid for everyone. Adoption must then become part of a universal right anywhere, and for anyone in the world.

Then all prospective adoptive parents can receive financial and fiscal support from all governments in their countries. As for years the costs of adoption were tax deductible in the Netherlands and in the USA where so-called adoption loans exist. Some in the Netherlands took out a private loan from banks or were financially sponsored by family members to be able to adopt children from mothers who were financially struggling.

Back to the international advice. We can best categorise adoptions as part of foreign relations. We can then finally see adoption as an exclusive form of development cooperation and as an exclusive form of migration, without the children’s parents, of course. Then it can finally be transferred to ministries of foreign affairs, but I’ll get to that in a moment.

Maybe a fun fact, adoption in South Korea used to be managed by the Ministry of Commerce. Yes, yes they already knew what it was about then.

OPEN BORDERS

If there is agreement that it is a universal right, then the Netherlands must also open its doors wide to adoptions to other countries from and for less fortunate children in the Netherlands, for example children who cannot find foster care, live below the poverty line, children of single parents, children who do not have health insurance, children of refugees, children who have been expelled from parental authority or children of parents who are in conflict, children who receive a better education elsewhere or opportunities that they would otherwise not get in the Netherlands.

This does mean that we have to accept adoption agencies from the US, Canada, Australia and other European countries, as well as from China, Saudi Arabia, India and Russia and all other countries where the economy is picking up. They should alle be entitled to the supply of children in the Netherlands.

INTERNATIONAL TRADE AGREEMENTS

Why not a transatlantic adoption trade deal on this topic. It has already been categorized as a Child Industrial Complex in social science (Cheney et al). Actually, we are not playing the game completely fair now. We do have access to, especially non-Western countries, but not the other way around.

If we really believe that the current pro-adoption arguments are universally legitimate, then we should also be able to apply them to a reciprocal exchange of children with other countries. What we call the in-and-out situation in the adoption jargon as with the USA.

The consequence is that the Hague Adoption Convention must be dropped, not that the Netherlands cares about it at all, even though the permanent office is in the Netherlands, it already ignores the subsidiarity principle (take care of your own children first before you may adopt in and out) . A so-called equal level playing field must then be created. Free play and free choice of children for everyone.

CHINESE PROSPECTIVE PARENTS IN THE NETHERLANDS

I can already picture it, hordes of childless Chinese couples and singles who go to disadvantaged neighbourhoods in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht and The Hague to select children. Or the smartest go into the provinces, looking for young unmarried mothers without family support. These are then entered in a database so that other prospective adoptive parents in China can also choose from the online catalog on age, gender, colour, health, background, DNA value and cost-benefit (starting with €25,000) analysis. Something that is now permitted in non-Western countries.

SILVER AND GOLD MEMBERSHIPS

And there will be a preferred supplier list for the countries that pay the most and have the most political interests. They may choose first! Or what about Islamic countries that use oil money to buy up children to win souls in the bible belt regions. At least the same number of children who have adopted in these regions should then be available on the Netherlands side for Muslim regions. There are several thousand. It seems like a great idea for a solid negotiating basis for peace and trade with Islamic superpowers. The evidence for such trade-offs is already there.

POLITICS AND BUSINESS AS USUAL

What about the adoption of children for political / business services like the former Federal Chancellor Schröder (then 60) who more or less received a child from Putin in 2004. As a token of thanks, a business delegation came to get to know Russia. This entire adoption affair was downplayed and concealed by the German government, but in the meantime German and Russian secret services were ordered to keep the ‘transmission of no 4’ in the right direction.

WHAT DEFENCE IS NOT GOOD FOR

And what about Belgian MPs who used Belgian military aircraft to hold private adoptions behind the scenes or to cooperate in large-scale ‘evacuations’ of so-called defenceless children from Congo. How do we know this again? Oh, the Babylift operations in Vietnam by USA’s airforce.

In other words, there is good business to be done with and for children, certainly internationally.

A condition is that there cannot be a covert first choice for well-to-do Netherland’s middle class to adopt domestically. After all, the Dutch children’s group will then suddenly become part of the international children’s market (M. Riben).

EQUAL WISHES EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES

What do you think of the above proposal?

Netherland’s prospective adoptive parents are given free rein and are allowed to choose what they want (they are just like animals that children, as adoptive mother Karen Gregory describes in her words in the newspaper Trouw) but other non-Western aspiring adoptive parents can also pick and deliver in the same way as is done in the Netherlands. Sounds like a great plan considering that it will offer equal opportunities for everyone.

Oh yeah. Perhaps an opportunity for companies such as Thuisbezorgd and Deliveroo to tap into a new and international market? The profit margin is enormous. In the peak times, an average of $ 2.5 billion a year was spent in international adoption.

If this open market is there, it is only a matter of time that an American movie star or celebrity files a lawsuit against the Netherlands for not getting what she ordered …

And there is a good chance that foreign multi-millionaires will come up with certain subsidies on projects so that they can buy and buy off the preferred supply for years. All seems like a good plan now that the Dutch economy can use a boost in this COVID time.

FALLING MARKET VALUE

Unfortunately, the above plan does not actually have any impact in the long run. It is being taken over by a new market. Namely that of commercial surrogacy and designer babies that you can put together yourself with the DNA material as you wish. Who then wants a second-hand child?

NEW TREATIES WITH THE SAME LOOPHOLES

But as it now seems, that market has discovered the loopholes of international adoption and wants a similar treaty as the Hague Adoption Convention. We already discussed this internationally in 2016. The smart ones among the lawyers, many white young women who say they care about other women in the world (or what matters to them, the control of surrogate mothers for a healthy gestation period) saw their chance. Solidarity with other women suddenly ceases when it comes to children. Then the ‘animal instincts’ are released, to use Gregory’s words again.

After all, it seems to be all ethically regulated on paper, but everything underhanded is possible because as soon as there is a treaty, nobody can and does not need to check each other anymore, and everything is possible. Long live international treaty laws.

SCHIZOPHRENE CONSUMERS

In the meantime, more than 9,000 signatures have been collected to lift the temporary stop on international adoption in the Netherlands. However, this petition group does not want to delve into the backgrounds of the subject that they are committed to as consumers. Perhaps Benjamin Barber is right in his book, The Infantile Consumer.

He introduces what he calls the ‘infantilist ethos’: the capitalist ideology that reduces responsible citizens to docile consumers and replaces the public good with private property. Barber shows how adult consumers infantilise in a global economy that generates massive overproduction of goods and focuses primarily on the child as a consumer. He keenly analyses the consequences of this development for our children, our freedom, citizenship and democracy.con

HEDONISM 2021

A long time ago, when I read Aldous Huxley’s book, ‘A Brave New World’, I had the creeps that this could be true. And lo and behold, it is already here. If this is correct, then Hannah Arendt’s theorem is also true. Even worse, history has already shown it. The human monster turns out to have an ordinary face of a ‘normal man or woman’ that is not served by a No. It seeks immediate satisfaction of individual needs and enjoyment. Possibly at the expense of others. This is called hedonism.

END OF FEMINISM 3.0

Feminism also appears to stop at the borders of the western world, and women of colour appear to remain anxiously silent on this subject. After all, they want everything that the dominant white women also have: freedom, beauty, power, prestige and also children of another, if it is convenient. Even if it costs an existential loss for those directly involved; parents and children.

THE HOLLYWOOD SAGA

In the meantime, Hollywood and Walt Disney take the subject of orphan and adoption as a present and no longer questions the suffering of Dombo, Bambi, Superman and many other examples. After all, people mainly remember the happy ending of Annie (The Musical), for example, but not what preceded it. After all, the consumer wants the end product but not the responsibility of the process in advance.

ADOPTION PORN

Since then, something like #adoptionporn seems to exist. Hordes of Dutch people sit in front of the TV every week with tissues ready to do themselves well with the program ‘as Spoorloos ed. indirectly permits this way. The price? National exposure of suffering.

FINALLY

But who actually pays for that suffering? Usually not the consumers. They are just end users.

I end with a quote from Dr. Jordan Peterson.

„Deine Rechte werden zu meiner Verantwortung.“

Mit anderen Worten, Ihr Recht wird zu meiner Verantwortung. Was Sie als Recht beanspruchen, muss dann von anderen bereitgestellt und geschützt werden. Die Frage ist und bleibt, zu welchem Preis?

Juni 27, 2019Juni 30, 2019

Innere Arbeit für Adoptierte

Einer der Höhepunkte meiner Reise in die Niederlande im letzten Monat war das persönliche Treffen mit Hilbrand Westra, einem internationalen Adoptierten, der in Südkorea geboren und in den Niederlanden adoptiert wurde und mit dem ich seit Beginn des ICAV zusammengearbeitet habe. Ich habe ihn nicht nur persönlich kennengelernt, ein paar Mahlzeiten geteilt, gelacht und für Fotos wie oben posiert … sondern ich habe ihn auch sprechen hören. Zuvor war er einer der wichtigsten Adoptiertenführer in den Niederlanden, der sich auf Regierungsebene für internationale Adoptierte einsetzte, und wurde mit dem Orden ausgezeichnet Order of Orange-Nassau für seine erstaunlichen Beiträge zur Gemeinschaft der Adoptierten.

In den letzten Jahren hat er sich in der Interessenvertretung zurückgehalten, sich aber seiner anderen Leidenschaft für Adoptierte zugewandt – der Bereitstellung professioneller emotionaler Unterstützung. Wie ich selbst hat auch er beobachtet, dass Advocacy am besten durchgeführt wird, wenn ein Adoptierter sein inneres Selbst geheilt hat, und oft ist das größte Hindernis für diese Heilung der Mangel an Fachleuten, die über Methoden und Erfahrung verfügen, um uns wirklich dabei zu helfen, die Traumata der Vergangenheit zu überwinden . Ich finde es toll, dass Hilbrand sich jetzt darauf konzentriert, diese Lücke in dem zu schließen, was wir am meisten brauchen!

Hier ist das Videoaufnahme Ich habe aus seiner Präsentation gemacht, die Ihnen einen kleinen Einblick gibt, wie er arbeitet. Es ist 23,4 Minuten lang, also stellen Sie sicher, dass Sie Zeit haben, es vollständig anzuhören. Entschuldigung für die leichte Unschärfe in der Aufnahme, ich muss beim Heranzoomen gegen die Linse gestoßen sein.

Er arbeitet mit den bekannten europäischen Modellen der Adoptionsaufstellung und der systemischen Arbeit, um Adoptierten (und Pflegepersonen) zu helfen, sich durch die Schichten des Traumas zu bewegen, die wir unweigerlich erwerben, weil wir unsere Herkunftsfamilien verlassen oder von ihnen entfernt werden.

Für diejenigen, die mehr über Hilbrand und das Coaching-Team wissen möchten, das er in Europa aufbaut, um anderen Adoptierten wichtige, professionelle emotionale Unterstützung zu bieten, besuchen Sie bitte seine Webseite (niederländisch) oder Hier (Englisch).

Vielen Dank an Chilenische Adoptierte weltweit der die Veranstaltung moderierte und Hilbrand, mich und andere wichtige Führungspersönlichkeiten von Adoptierten als Gastredner einlud. Es war ein ERSTAUNLICHER und unvergesslicher Tag!