I did come across some notes, though, that I thought might help some of the people out there who have a hard time understanding what my (and so many others') big beef is with Bethany. I'm not trying to just spew ugliness about them. Honestly. But I have begun to realize in this grieving process that a very LARGE part of my grief is that they still counsel women in the same manner I was counseled, and people LOVE them for it. I mean, they LOVE it. They praise Bethany's ministry and just can't say enough good about them. And if you bring up anything negative... look out. LOL
Well, folks, here's a glimpse into one of my counseling sessions during my pregnancy. I would often take notes while I met with my caseworker, and this is the gem I pulled out of my files today. It is a list of questions she wanted me to think over and answer for her during our next meeting together regarding my desire to keep my baby. Hold on tight!
1) Am I truly searching out God's will or my own?
2) Am I being realistic about being able to go to college if I parent?
3) Am I remaining firm in my desire to parent because of outside influences and opinions?
4) Am I doing what is truly best for my child with the right motives?
5) Is my relationship with my parents suffering because I want to parent?
6) Is my relationship with God suffering because of selfishness?
7) Am I willing to humbly obey God's will as He reveals it to me?
8) Do I love God more than my baby?
9) Am I closing my eyes to the doors God is opening because of denial?
10) Am I thankful to God for what He has delivered me from so far?
Surely anyone who will be honest knows that what they just read was very sad. Do you think that was ministry? Was that unbiased? Appropriate for speaking with a 17 year old who is purposefully separated from her parents? Do you think that is something that I should look back on and respond with a "Thank God Bethany helped me see the light!" I know the word sad is not very descriptive, but honestly, sometimes a simple word says a lot. Sad. That is what I am every time I have read back through that today.
It is not ok to counsel women in this way. It is using guilt and God to manipulate a desired response from someone who is in a vulnerable state physically, emotionally, and spiritually. The woman who asked me to think on those things was not a tyrant. She was a sweet, sincere woman in her young twenties who was working on her masters in social work. She was nice to me. She wrote kind little notes at the bottom of my form update letters for the first few months of my updates (until she left employment with Bethany to be closer to college friends.) She was as sweet as candy, but she was SERIOUSLY misguided. I have no doubt that she was well-intentioned. I'm sure she felt sorry for me and felt somewhat uncomfortable with my emotional struggles. I'm sure she probably entered her career with the hopes that she was going to minister to women in unplanned pregnancies and couples who suffered through infertility. I believe I've heard the career referred to as being a "dream-maker" before? (Tongue in cheek.)
Anyway, pure intentions or not, she bombed. But she isn't the only one. She is one of many, many social workers asking pregnant women if they are searching out God's will for their baby, all the while sending women home from their counseling appointments with those "Dear Birthmother" letters and profile books full of people already calling them a birthmother and praising them for being so selfless and mature and telling them their woes of being childless and having so much love to give. I'm not being snarky. I'm letting you into my life for about two minutes. I'm trying to show you how something that is so important to me, my belief in God and my desire to make a right decision, was used to convince me that I needed to give my baby to someone else who God approved of more. Go back and read it again if you need to.
I am not angry tonight. I'm not bitter. As I said before, I'm sad. I'm sad that people raise money for this to happen. I'm sad that when women talk about their experience, others are there to add insult to injury and tell them they just need to find some peace in their life. I'm sad that so many, many people would suppose that they know God's will for other people's lives. Maybe that is why they continue to charge so much for their services. I would imagine that supernatural wisdom like that is worth a pretty penny. LOL
I love my God. I am at peace with my God. I trust my God even though I am not certain of what he is doing in my life and my daughter's life. I live in forgiveness and freedom because He not only died for me, but then rose from the grave to show that he had overcome every evil thing, including death. Nothing, nothing, can confine Him or test His love for me. I do not have to accept someone else's definition of who He is or what He asks of me because He reveals Himself to me personally. This is the hope that everyone in Christ can claim. If you do not share my faith, I do not expect you to embrace what I am saying, but this is my source of strength and courage and confidence.
I want to write more, but I'll sleep now.
"Let those who fear the Lord say, 'His love endures forever'. In my anguish I cried to the Lord, and he answered by setting me free. The Lord is with me; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?"
Psalm 118:4-6
I hate the way the word "coercion" is used now, almost relfexively, but that was not counselling. I'd call it highly manipulative.
ReplyDeleteLucy, thanks for reading. :)
ReplyDeleteO Solo Mama, Yes, I agree with you about the curse of the word "coercion" these days, and so I deliberately tried to steer clear of it. It is kind of the default term regurgitated by well-meaning pro-reformers, but I think people's experiences lose credence in the hearts of others who are trying to learn and understand when it is used so frequently. Manipulation and guilt seem to be fitting terms oftentimes with faith-based agencies who have ethics problems. And I think people have a clear definition of what manipulation and guilt are, because they can find a time in their own life when they have experienced one or both. Coercion is beyond comprehension for many because they usually have nothing in their life with which to compare it or identify.
Sigh. It makes me sad too to read that anyone would use God to indirectly manipulate a situation towards a "desired" result- in your case, (and many others) relinquishment.
ReplyDeleteHugs.
Using one's belief in God is probably the easiest method of manipulation. The believer has good intentions and wants to do what God wants - which is so easily twisted into pushing for what the person in power wants, disguised as the will of God.
ReplyDelete100% agree with "maybe." Thanks for giving us a peek into what your experience was like. It makes me sick to my stomach to read that and to think that this is STILL going on today, but what is worse is how "praise worthy" they are in the adoption community. It is absolutely offensive to me as a Christian to see these things being done under the name of Christ. Isn't this where He's supposed to come turn over the tax collectors' tables?!
ReplyDeleteBTW,
"Maybe that is why they continue to charge so much for their services. I would imagine that supernatural wisdom like that is worth a pretty penny."
That made me snort. :)
Hey, Jenni. I want to tell you that I agree about the SW part. I BELIEVE they BELIEVE, well the young and unexperienced ones, that they are doing the right thing. But let me explain it like this. When I was learning to be a college teacher, we were told what our student's first paper assignment should be. Then our prof told us that we would have to do the assignment. And guess what? It was hard! It's so much easier being the person in power, the person assigning papers, and then grades, than it is to be the learner, the one under fire, the one who has to do what he/she has to do in order to "pass." Adoption counseling is like that in some ways. The counselors are told how to "teach"/counsel, but they never have to walk, or attempt to walk, in the shoes of the mothers (like the students). So truly, how can they do their jobs well if they don't know what it is they are really doing? I know that there's not a valid excuse when the counselors are forever changing lives with their counseling....but I do see where these younger SWs are coming from. And I also know, from personal experience w/a friend, how poor counseling can alter a mother and a baby's life forever.
ReplyDeleteWhat was done to you was horrible, using your faith to manipulate you into surrendering when that was not really your choice. I have very little regard for Fundamentalist religious agencies like Bethany. There are too many awful stories coming out of them.
ReplyDeleteI share O Solo Mama's distaste for the word "coerced" because it has been so overblown to make everything "coercion". I think "manipulated" fits your situation well, and am glad to see you speaking out.
I am a mother who surrendered in 1968, do not have your deep faith but hate to see faith exploited and misused as Bethany has done.
I see what you are saying, Rachel. :) But the thing is, there is a whole lot more at stake when someone "green" is counseling a person about relinquishing a baby vs. teaching a writing assignment. I am not downplaying your example because I agree with what you are saying. But the applications have very different ramifications. I don't think there is really that much room for a learning curve in relinquishment counseling. It IS often young, inexperienced women in those positions who mean well. There are also a lot of adoptive mothers in those roles, as well as women who have had abortions in the past and who felt "led" to go into this type of ministry out of remorse for what they did in the past. I've met them. Plenty of them. I've only once met an expectant mom counselor who was also a woman who relinquished. She was the same age as me and about 5 years post-relinquishment. She stayed in her job about a year, then got pregnant and became a SAHM.
ReplyDeleteI strongly believe that many SWs are severely undertrained and underqualified to be counseling the women sitting across from them. They often have no experience with anything the woman is facing, and they don't have experience with trauma therapy. Because adoption loss is not considered trauma. The best we are normally offered is some grief counseling. But I think the problem is that they always want you to try to "move on" or "move past" the pain instead of helping you really EMBRACE it for what it was/is... TRAUMA. Unfortunately, no amount of good will or pure intention can make up for the big gap that their inexperience and underpreparedness leaves. :( They don't know that they should be telling a woman beforehand that it will be trauma and that she will never get over it. And they don't know how to help her pick up the pieces when she goes through with relinquishment and then needs some help. I literally got a one page handout with a stick figure on it (well, it looked more like the outline of a gingerbread man) and the five stages of grief listed beside the stick figure. There was a short descriptive phrase beside each stage of grief. THAT's IT. That was my "warning" before hand. That was my preparation for the rest of my life without my child. I'm pretty sure it was prepared by someone who had never known any kind of loss, let alone what it was like to relinquish a child.
Cedar posted on First Mother Forum that rape crisis counseling was often the best form of counseling for mothers post-relinquishment. From her description I can see where she is coming from - the rape crisis therapy was really trauma counseling, which I think is very appropriate for mothers who lose a child to adoption.
ReplyDeleteOf course this counseling would be after-the-fact. Would anyone relinquish if they were told they would need trauma counseling on par with what a rape victim needs?
i need to read more, i just used the word coerced in a blog entry never, really considered its overused. anyway I felt so sad when I read your list, and I despise when a pregnant woman is called a birthmom
ReplyDeleteThanks for the follow up, and I do understand what you are saying. DH and I discussed the fact (earlier last year) as you bring up here. That an "oops" or poor counseling isn't just an easily fixable mistake. It's a life-altering, forever event that changes another woman's life FOREVER with 100% no "take backs" (as they say in grade school). I guess what I was trying to say with my analogy is that the counselor is just repeating what he/she learned in one counseling class without really getting it. But we can't expect someone to "get" something he/she hasn't experienced for himself/herself, you know? But yes, there are better ways to train counselors, I am sure, and putting someone so "green" in the position to counsel is not a good idea.
ReplyDeletePS: You putting your list on your blog is like WHOA. I mean, we all talk about unethical practicies, but you really gave it a name here with your example. I can't even begin to digest the weight of those questions.
When we told our friends and family that we were not using Bethany for our upcoming adoption......crickets.......
ReplyDelete"But they are a Christian agency? Everyone, I have ever known has used them and has loved them. How could you possibly go to an agency that does not claim Jesus?"
A close friend relinquished five years ago through them. She was carrying a healthy white child and only given 3 profiles to look through. Yes, only 3!! (My guess is that they had been the longest waiting couples at the agency.) She was told nothing about any sort of open adoption. Nothing. The agency heralded her for making the brave choice, the right choice, the choice that will give her child a better life. She did not choose abortion, YEAH! She did not choose parenting, double YEAH!
The underlying pennance theme was sprinkled throughout my friends experience. You had pre-marital sex, now you must pay. Cost is your child.
Great blog, I found it ironically through the BB's.