Word: birth
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SABREENA BOYD LEARNED TO cook, clean and take care of herself when she was just 7 because, she says, her birth mother was often too drunk or strung out on drugs to watch over her. After she moved in with the Juarezes, "I was told that I needed to try to live the rest of my childhood," says SaBreena. "But what does being a kid mean? I don't think I've ever gotten that explained...
...Elmira, N.Y. Placed in foster care at age 9 after his father died and his mother was unable to care for him on her own, Dan moved in with Jackie and her parents the next year. Now 24, he still remembers the meeting he attended in which his birth mother told the social worker that she was relinquishing her parental rights: "I was devastated," he says. "I was hearing my mother say she doesn't want...
Such feelings of abandonment by the birth family are common among older adopted kids and can make it hard for them to trust any adult. "That your mom, the person who is supposed to be there for you no matter what in life, is the first person who actually wasn't there for you--that can be very painful," says Barry Chaffkin, a co-founder of the New York City-- based adoption-services agency Changing the World One Child at a Time...
MANY ADOPTED TEENS ARE TORN BY SPLIT allegiances to their birth and adoptive families. A tall, bubbly 16-year-old who plays drums and dreams of being a pilot or neurophysicist, Lamar Stapleton says being in foster care "taught me a lot about life. When push comes to shove, you've only got yourself and your family." And by family, he means his birth family. In November, Lamar and his younger sister Nasia, 14, were adopted by Shirley Williams, 61, a single parent in New York City's Harlem who had already raised five of her own children...
...every day and telling her that he loves her, but he says, "Seeing her as my mother--I don't think I can ever really do that because that would be blocking my [biological] mother out of my life." He continues to hope that he can find his missing birth mom and has even searched for her "once or twice" on the Internet. Having his sister with him helps, but sometimes the stress of dueling loyalties makes him moody. "He holds a lot in. I keep telling him it's not good holding in," says Williams. Admits Lamar: "I think...