What's with these jerk adoptive mothers?

[GodsKnickers]

This woman is a cee you next tuesday. Surely there are mandated reporters who've stumbled across this blog, and could do something about it.

[ViolaSebastian]

Jie Jie was adopted in 2011, before apple, I think.   I can hardly see any photos or mention of Blossom or Sissy in the blog posts for the latter half of that year.  No mention that they exist on "Jie Jie's first Christmas".

I want this blog turn out to be fake.  I feel sick at the horror of it.

It seems the order of adoption was Jie Jie, Sissy, Blossom (who was rehomed from another family in the United States that originally adopted her from China), then Apple.  

Sorry to double post, but WTF, lady?!  Kimmie is more upset that Jie Jie can't do gymnastics due to her disabilities than Jie Jie herself was!  It's clear this woman expects her adopted children, who face considerable challenges, to meet all of her hopes and dreams.  You don't get that guarantee with birth children, let alone adopted children with special challenges.  Sheesh.

http://www.fencingmama.blogspot.ca/2012/06/secret-grief.html

[Maggie Mae]

She's completely hypocritical about Jie Jie, too. She has a post about how Jie Jie's special needs are a private family matter, but gives enough clues (and flat out said they went to clinic for Spinal Bifida) that it's not too hard to make some educated guesses about what is going on.

I don't know why she adopted Sissy. Within days off her family day, she was posting about how she just needs to make it a few years until Sissy is 18. But of course she won't actually kick sissy out. It's just a thought that occurred to get that she decided to publish on her blog.

It's also weird to me that she doesn't have a page like other mommy blogs that list and name and describe each child.

[blessalessi]

I'm glad to be wrong! It took 5 years for the first adoption to take place then?  I need to read the blog in chronological order, but there are hundreds of entries in some years, and no headings to search efficiently.  Maybe that has prevented other people wading through and reporting her.

 

[Aine]

Based on this latest post about Sissy, is it wrong that I kind of hope for a disrupted adoption and that a family who knows how to nurture and teach traumatized kids takes her in instead?

This woman makes me sick.

[keepercjr]

 

Are you near her, keeper?  I'm in CA, too, so I know the issues of (not) finding an area with a low COL.  But I get a Bay Area or Northern California vibe from her writings (which I've not explored in depth -- the surface is already making me ill), which is typically an expensive area and which has worsened over the last few years with the tech invasion.  I know *I* couldn't make ends meet with an in-home daycare and some sewing lessons, so it's confusing to read what she presents.  

 

Yes I live in the same city as her.  As I read through her blog I had some suspicions and then I found 1 picture that confirmed it.  We live in the Central Valley.

If Sissy stole the tablet and put it back then she obviously made a big show about how she was going to use it to watch her every move.  She shows zero understanding about her developmental delays. 

[Jana814]

Does anyone know the ages of the kids. 

[blessalessi]

I have been skimming her blog to work out the adoption timeline.

My initial confusion was because I thought "apple" was a specific child given that name after being matched with Kimmie by the agency.  

It seems that the first application Kimmie made was for a baby girl,  and she decided in advance to call that child "apple" (for blog purposes?) because the baby would be the longed-for "apple of my eye".  Over the next three years she decorated a room for "apple", sewed the first diaper, bought a teddy bear, etc, and wrote blog entries about the things she had done for (the hope of) a baby that she had applied for but not been allocated.

This entry from 2010 gives a very sad description of Kimmie's mental state, and the way she is using the adoption process to come to terms with her own difficult childhood.

She is referring to the book "Primal Wound", which she borrowed from the adoption agency library.

On page 25 the author describes a conversation she had when her daughter, who was adopted, was 14. (girl to mom) "I understand that she had to give me up, Mom, but why doesn't that make me feel any better?" (mom replies) "It is the 14-year-old girl who understands the reasons for her relinquishment, but the feelings are those of a newborn baby who simply feels the loss of a mother who never came back."

I am finding this information supremely helpful on two fronts, one, for Apple's sake and, two, for my own personal reasons. My mother has had many husbands, 6 to be exact. Only one died, #5, the rest went away due to divorce, my mom initiating it. I have discovered in the last year something terrible that I greatly suspected but how have confirmation of. My mother deliberately did all she could to severe ties between me and my father and all paternal relatives. These people are good people, dairy farmers, perhaps less sophisticated than my maternal family would have liked, but the mistakes (mostly due to lack of sophistication) my paternal relatives made did not warrant the treatment they received and we all suffered, me the absolute most of all.

My first step-father I had from age 2-7 and to me, he was my dad. I don't have a picture of him; my mother destroyed them all. I am burning to know what he looked like because I cannot remember and it haunts me. In my life, one day he was simply gone and there wasn't a trace of him. I remember his parents, too, my grandparents for 5 years and they, too, were simply gone.

I'd often wondered why my paternal grandparents never came to visit me, why I always had to go to them (until age 6 when my mother was able to prevent visitation through coercement of me) and now I know, they were prevented from doing so by my mother.

I have experienced abandonment, many times. I am only now learning, through the information I have found around adoption, explanations for who I am, how I am, why I have feelings that I have. The conversation mentioned above between the mother and daughter put into words so clearly why, no matter what I did with any of my "dads," I couldn't fill the holes in my soul, and that no matter what I do now, I still cannot because the injury happened to a child and that child no longer exists but is a grown adult now.

It is precisely because of this that reunions between reliquished children and their birthparents don't heal the wound either. It's forever and we learn to put it into perspective and live with it, some better than others.

"Apple" was not allocated to Kimmie at this time, she just represented Kimmie's dream. All of this reading was Kimmie's exploration of her own experience.

Sadly, I suspect the emboldened part at the end explains, at least in part,  the current cruelty to her now 4 adopted children.  

She has never experienced healing of her own wounds, the children obviously were never going to be able to heal her simply by their presence,  and now she cannot begin to allow them to heal from their own traumas. They are being forced to experience her own pain, and learn that pain is forever.

 

[EyeQueue]

 

 

My heart is breaking for these girls.  Her words literally drip with hatred.

 (sorry...that highlighted bit is really loud, but I can't seem to make it go away...)

How dare she say she would trade her child???  My god in heaven....

From what I understand (mostly from watching TV shows and knowing a couple of LDS people), hearing God speak to you is fairly common in LDS theology. Many decisions, etc. are attributed to hearing Heavenly Father speak to this person or that person and guiding their decisions. Only I always thought it was more of a metaphorical thing, and not actually hearing a voice speaking to you.

Anyway, though, apparently hearing voices--as long as it's wrapped up in religion--is totes OK! Nothing to be concerned about.

ETA: WTF would you want to post a picture of yourself vomiting? There's an entry in 2009 (I think--I breezed through a ton of these when I couldn't sleep last night) that talks about her bad "Aunt Flo" day each month, and how she took some medication that made her stick to her stomach, and there's a photo of her holding a plastic tub up to her head and she's presumably vomiting into it.

Can you imagine? "Hey, can you snap this photo of me while I'm puking so I can put it up on my blog?"

[iheartchacos]

I'm confused about her being proud the girls discussed and decided independently to be baptized when she says they can't even get ready in the morning without instruction. And why does she attend this church...ward? Where is seems no one understands/likes her?!

'My fireman' needs to run. Fast.

[blessalessi]

From what I understand (mostly from watching TV shows and knowing a couple of LDS people), hearing God speak to you is fairly common in LDS theology. Many decisions, etc. are attributed to hearing Heavenly Father speak to this person or that person and guiding their decisions. Only I always thought it was more of a metaphorical thing, and not actually hearing a voice speaking to you.

Anyway, though, apparently hearing voices--as long as it's wrapped up in religion--is totes OK! Nothing to be concerned about.

It has been estimated, I think, that up to 5% of the population hear voices at some point in their lives and the phenomenon isn't universally thought to be a sign of mental illness. Among those people who do find it distressing, some choose to use psychiatric medication but, increasingly, there are networks of people who accept the phenomenon, and/or seek therapeutic help to understand how those voices may be ways that their minds and bodies are coping with past trauma, and what the voices might represent to them.

When I was a born-again Christian, it was common to talk of hearing from God, but this usually meant through bible verses or thoughts that came to mind while praying.  I would guess that it is not impossible that some people actually did hear audible-to-them voices but we rarely discussed the mechanics of it, so who knows whether some people experiencing an unusual phenomenon mistakenly feel validated by other Christians' use of metaphor? 

My armchair "diagnosis" is that this deeply insecure woman, who struggles to get on with people in real life, (her blog and poo pocket success notwithstanding) is getting her only validation from a very real-to-her sense that God is going to vindicate and validate all her unfulfilled hopes and dreams.

 

Those poor kids.  

 

[ViolaSebastian]

From what I understand (mostly from watching TV shows and knowing a couple of LDS people), hearing God speak to you is fairly common in LDS theology. Many decisions, etc. are attributed to hearing Heavenly Father speak to this person or that person and guiding their decisions. Only I always thought it was more of a metaphorical thing, and not actually hearing a voice speaking to you.

Anyway, though, apparently hearing voices--as long as it's wrapped up in religion--is totes OK! Nothing to be concerned about.

ETA: WTF would you want to post a picture of yourself vomiting? There's an entry in 2009 (I think--I breezed through a ton of these when I couldn't sleep last night) that talks about her bad "Aunt Flo" day each month, and how she took some medication that made her stick to her stomach, and there's a photo of her holding a plastic tub up to her head and she's presumably vomiting into it.

Can you imagine? "Hey, can you snap this photo of me while I'm puking so I can put it up on my blog?"

Or all the photographs of the crap her cat Henry coughed up when he had pneumonia.   

I often wonder if the "voice of God" that some people hear is actually a person somehow mistaking his or her inner monologue for the voice of a higher power.  I have seemingly random thought pop into my head all the live long day, but I wasn't raised to think it was the voice of God.  However, I could see thinking that if one was raised that way.  

[apandaaries]

From what I understand (mostly from watching TV shows and knowing a couple of LDS people), hearing God speak to you is fairly common in LDS theology. Many decisions, etc. are attributed to hearing Heavenly Father speak to this person or that person and guiding their decisions. Only I always thought it was more of a metaphorical thing, and not actually hearing a voice speaking to you.

Anyway, though, apparently hearing voices--as long as it's wrapped up in religion--is totes OK! Nothing to be concerned about.

In Under the Banner of Heaven, Ron and Dan Lafferty knew that God wanted them to be polygamists.  Ron "received a revelation," and Dan put it into action.  

I'm generally pretty concerned when people know that God has spoken to them, at least in the US.  I've read in other cultures, those voices are less aggressive: http://www.npr.org/2015/06/21/416272772/auditory-hallucinations-may-vary-across-cultures

[blessalessi]

OMFG.  I'm not going to spell out exactly what I have just read because I don't know if I'm correct in my assumption or if it is fair to talk openly because it involves vulnerable children who may look themselves up one day .

Please could someone check the comments in the blog link below and tell me if they see what I see.

Blossom was apparently given to Kimmie by another family whose adoption was "disrupted".  Commenter Keith says he is aware of the situation and supports Kimmie.  Keith's blogger profile has two blogs linked as favourites: Kimmie's blog ad another blogging family that we have been discussing this week at FJ.

My heart hurts so much or these children.

 

17 September 2009. Blossom was announced as new family member, given to Kimmie via a disrupted adoption from another family

http://fencingmama.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/baby-on-doorstep.html

If it is that family that disrupted Blossom's adoption before she even hit US soil, then I really fear for their current adoptive children and any future children they are allowed to "care" for.  

[Antimony]

Hidden Content

 

17 September 2009. Blossom was announced as new family member, given to Kimmie via a disrupted adoption from another family

http://fencingmama.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/baby-on-doorstep.html

Hidden Content

...Oh...no.
This is now horrific.
His pseudonym for them -- Travel Family -- makes just too much sense.

Also -- "Blossom looks the most chinese" -- what the hell, Kimmie? 

[alexandracabot]

To stop certain other destructive behaviors, Blossom stayed in a toddler harness all week. Yes, she could get out of it, and did, hence the alarms, but it bought me a few more seconds to stop her when she was bent on doing something wrong. I have learned a new level of vigilence in keeping my eyes on her. As extreme as this was, she has derived a large measure of security by staying so closely at my side.

This is her five-year-old? She put her eleven-year-old in a toddler harness every day for a week? In the house, too, it sounds like? 

Her "punishments" sound borderline sadistic.

Edit because it's worse than I thought — she was 11, not 5.

[ViolaSebastian]

This is her five-year-old? She put her five-year-old in a toddler harness every day for a week? In the house, too, it sounds like?

Her "punishments" sound borderline sadistic.

Kimmie adopted Blossom when she was 11.  So, she put her eleven-year-old in a toddler harness every day for a week.  

ETA: Her blog pre-adoption is TERRIFYING.  My god, what sort of woman bakes herself a Barbie cake for her 39th birthday?!  She posed it with a Ken doll and a baby, too, and wrote about how she hopes to find a husband. 

[blessalessi]

...Oh...no.This is now horrific.
His pseudonym for them -- Travel Family -- makes just too much sense.

Also -- "Blossom looks the most chinese" -- what the hell, Kimmie? 

Yes.  Also, I googled and there are still listings in the search engine for the old "Travel Family" blog that show up with comments from a Keith who adopted a child from China at the same time. 

If this turns out to be a valid connection, then I would kind of like Travel Family to be exposed for this before they are given care of any other orphaned children. But, OTOH, I would not want to make the situation worse for the existing children.

 

 

[DaisyD]

Well, that explains where the obsession with "ignorance" comes from. None of the men her mother married were "sophisticated" enough for her family. In my experience, that is a euphemism for ignorant. She probably saw all that disdain and internalized it. 

[blessalessi]

Can these people be reported for all this horrific behaviour.  Would child protective services look into things that are written on a blog?

Can anyone save screenshots of the worst posts, in case the blog goes private? I can't do it on my mobile device.  I'm fairly certain this woman is linked to the other adoption blogger who went private the other week, and the situation is as horrific as all fuck.

The suspected Travel family blog dates say they met their teenage adoptive daughter for the first time in July 2011. Blossom was supposedly brought to the UK in Sept 2012 and I can't see a direct link from what is left, but the families are connected by common links amongst the adoption bloggers and might share info about FJ persecution to encourage blogs to be made private.

[samira_catlover]

Looking at this (and at bits and pieces of the blog), I am literally feeling nauseated. EXTREMELY glad this high-octane b*tch is on the other side of North America, because if I ever ran into her, there'd be so much gawd-damage done that I'd never get out of hell! *insert emoticon for extreme rage here*

Looked at the sneaky hot-sauce blogpage (CANNOT bear to read much)---Then I asked her why she was angry at me when she was the one who sinned (and I use that word strongly because she committed a grievous sin against her sister).

Does anyone with a strong stomach know what the hell "grievous sin" the Wicked, Wicked Girl did to her sister? Maybe it's my weird perspective, but to me "grievous sin" would be maybe something like attempted murder....

[DaisyD]

I didn't read the post, but from what others said, she stole food. That's why the hot sauce salt water was even there. She was trying to punish her for "stealing" food.

[Antimony]

I didn't read the post, but from what others said, she stole food. That's why the hot sauce salt water was even there. She was trying to punish her for "stealing" food.

I believe that it was Pediasure which I suppose must have been for Apple, specifically, as something highly nutritious before/after her surgeries and to help her grow?

[blessalessi]

So a child sho has suffered food deprivation, took a bottle of easy to drink sustenance that was in the kitchen cupboard?

Grievous sins were committed, but not by the children....

[EyeQueue]

 

My heart is breaking for these girls.  Her words literally drip with hatred.

 (sorry...that highlighted bit is really loud, but I can't seem to make it go away...)

How dare she say she would trade her child???  My god in heaven....

Please disregard the quote above. I can't figure out how to un-do it.

I just got up to her adoption of Jie-Jie. Such a cute little girl, and she seems so animated and vibrant. Some of her expressions are just so sassy and bold. She seems like a real pistol!

And then there's these tidbits (after the child has been with her for less than a month):

"She shares food easily and doesn't hoard at all."

Because this is apparently a punishable offense (we find out later), and not at all something to be understood within the context of possible deprivation from living in an orphanage.

"She's a great sleeper. We've had only one meltdown since being home and it was at bedtime. I've put a twin bed up against my double bed for her. I tuck her in and lay next to her and look at her and wind up a musical doll (only once, and she knows it but asks for it again anyway, and I say no or bedtime gets prolonged and we risk a meltdown)."

Wouldn't want to wind up the damned doll a few times to make your newly-adopted daughter who has been uprooted from all she knows and plopped down into a completely unfamiliar country feel a bit more comfortable and secure. Nope. Because the damned schedule and Your Way is the only thing that matters, right?

And she's such a hypocrite. She mentioned several times in the posts leading up to Jie Jie's adoption how she would purposefully "allow regression" to be able to baby and pamper her daughter.

So much for that, I guess.