My name is Kali. I am an adoptee rights activist.
When I was 3 days old my mother surrendered me to the foster care system before she left the hospital after my birth. We spent the first 3 days of my life together.
I then entered a foster home while the courts tracked down my dad to terminate his rights, which took approximately 5.5 months. Once he terminated his rights, I was adopted by my adoptive parents to a small citrus ranch in a citrus valley in California.
I struggled through life, with a conflict of identity and feelings of abandonment and so many unanswered questions about my adoption. When I was 18 I tried to search and went to the courthouse to request my records, I didn't realize, at the time, that my records were sealed from me. I was under the impression that I could them when I turned 18.
It took me 3 more years until I found my mother and father online after an extensive search on my own through an online birth index, name and address finders and classmates.com.
Meeting them was incredible, we are now in relationships, and yes my adoptive parents were supportive. Its healthy, its good. I am actually a descendant of King Kamehameha which is really cool.
Having closure in that department of finally knowing "who" i came from and "who" i was, I was able to address greater needs in the adoptee rights department. Adoptees are being denied their rights in 44 states across the country. This is a civil rights violation to us as I'm sure DMC has shared with you. We deserve the absolute SAME rights to our birth certificates as the non adopted have. Nothing more, nothing less. We deserve equality.
I am organizing the Adoptee Rights Demonstration. It is my life. I breathe it, i dream about it, I manifest it, I organize it and we're expecting over a hundred adoptees and their families!! We are protesting at the Annual State Legislatures Convention during the week of July 20th 2008. I have been working on this for almost a year and am determined to protest at every single one until I have reached the attention of all of the legislatures and model records bills are introduced and passed into law in each of the 44 states.
We have rented an exhibitors booth to have floor time with the legislatures and speak our cause to them. There are thousands expected so hopefully we'll make some good contacts and set some plans of action to implement open records for adult adoptees across the country.
Besides this I am a mother to two amazing children and I am a massage therapist on the weekends when my partner watches our children. That is my story, this is who I am. Thank you for listening.
Kali C.
