Sheila Ganz

Interview by Livia Montana

Livia Montana: In the years since you’ve made Unlocking the Heart of Adoption it has become such an important film for everyone in the adoption constellation and even beyond. What inspired you to create the documentary?

Sheila Ganz: I was very involved with PACER (Post Adoption Center for Education and Research) which is a support group in the Bay Area. During National Adoption Awareness Month in November 1986, I took part in a demonstration for open records that PACER sponsored. Roughly 35 people were there and TV cameras showed up. We went home feeling that we had done something to further the cause. The next year, roughly the same 35 people were there again, but the TV cameras were not. So I went home that day to think about what I could do to help get the attention of the media on these issues.

LM: What made you decide to include all three triad viewpoints?

SG: I wanted to show that we’re all in this together. I don’t think of it as an either/or—that question of who’s the “real parent.” We’re all real. The documentary is very carefully structured so that it interweaves adoptees, adoptive parents and birthparents.

LM: What did you want to achieve by making Unlocking the Heart of Adoption?

SG: To bring about greater understanding among the triad. I thought if one person from the triad can relate to someone in the film that will open him or her up to hearing what the other members of the triad have to say. In the bigger picture, I wanted the film to advocate for open adoption records. I also wanted it to be an educational tool for adoption agencies and schools of social work—all the people who need to know what this means to us. People need to realize that adoption is not a one-time event. They need to know that it is a life-long process.

LM: When you started the documentary you were a first-time filmmaker. It took you fourteen and a half years to complete. What kept you focused during that time? What kept you coming back to the project?

SG: It was the people in the film. When I started, there was nothing out there on adoption like this, absolutely nothing. You sit in a support group and you hear all these stories. But outside, nobody knows anything about those stories. Everyone just says, “Oh, adoption is so wonderful!” I wanted to show the reality. Quitting was never an option. Actually, about two years into making the film I decided to look up “adoption” in the Yellow Pages. What I saw was pretty bad. For instance, there was this ad for “surrogateships”—that was the word they used. As a birthmother that really irritates me a lot. It’s like, what am I? Am I just a vessel, a delivery system for somebody else’s baby? At that moment I thought to myself, “If you ever think of stopping work on this film, just go look up ‘adoption’ in the Yellow Pages.”

LM: What stories or moments tend to most strongly impact audiences?

SG: If I’m presenting it to adoptive parents, it’s often that moment when Jody talks about how finding her birthmother brought her closer to her adoptive mother because her adoptive mother was willing to go down that path with her. That has been so powerful for adoptive parents to hear. One adoptive mother said that it changed how she related to her adopted son who was around six at the time. A lot of adoptees really seem to like the sculpture I complete in the film. (A figure of a mother holding a baby.) I personally love it when Hal, the adoptive father, says that adoption was the elephant in the middle of the room that the family never talked about.

LM: There are so many powerful stories in the film. The one about Alice, the elderly lady who found her birthson, really touched me.

SG: I’ll never forget when I did a showing for about 25 social workers here in the Bay Area. They were stunned that 60 years later this woman still wanted to find her son. The stories that strike people the most depend on the point of view they’re coming from. Those moments give them insight into the truth of the situation—a truth they could never have imagined before.

LM: One of the most interesting things about you having made a documentary on adoption is that you are a birthmother. In general, birthparents are underrepresented in terms of the triad.

SG: Birthparents are very much underrepresented. When I tell people that I made a documentary on adoption, they ask, “Oh, are you adopted?” That is the general assumption. Nobody asks, “Oh, are you a birthmother?”

LM: Birthparents are silenced. It seems that society still tends to be judgmental of their experiences and shame them.

SG: Being a birthparent is a double-edged sword. Because on the one hand they’re saying, “Oh, you’re doing this great thing by relinquishing your baby to somebody better than you.” But then the minute you do it, you’re one down from them.

LM: There’s definitely mixed messages around relinquishment.

SG: Yes. In fact, I’ve talked to some birthmothers who have relinquished in open adoptions, and they were told by the agency, “You’ll be through the grieving process in six months.”

LM: Where do agencies get that statistic from?

SG: I think they just make it up.

LM: How can birthparents claim their voice?

SG: Birthparents will never have as big a voice as adoptive parents and adoptees do. Because when people think of adoption, they think of the adoptive family.

LM: That’s true. People on the outside of the adoptive experience do tend to focus on the adoptive family and not the relinquishment. The word “adopted” doesn’t focus on the “relinquishment” part or what comes before it.

SG: Right, it immediately makes all of that invisible. But I’ve had people who don’t have any connection with the triad watch the film and say, “Wow, I had no idea.” So it’s enlightening for them, also.

LM: It’s great that Unlocking the Heart of Adoption helps educate those who are not connected to the triad. Yet there are still so many people within the triad who don’t know that it is okay to talk about the complexities inherent in the adoptive and relinquishment experience. There are so many voices that are not a part of this discussion. They don’t even know that there’s a discussion going on.

SG: You’re right, and that’s not only happening to an older generation—there are even young kids who don’t know. It’s unbelievable. There are many adoptive parents now who are more open-minded as far as birthfamily is concerned, but they have to reinvent the wheel. And then there are some parents who just don’t want to go there. Although that’s human nature, it’s the kids who suffer because they can’t express their feelings. I tell people what Jody said in the film; the fact is that if you face your worst fear you’ll actually get what you want. Because a hundred percent across the board, any adoptee who I’ve ever talked to who had the support of their adoptive parents during a search said that they always felt closer to their adoptive parents, to their parents.

LM: Why do you think that is?

SG: Because then they don’t have that elephant in the middle of the room. It’s like with any other relationship—it’s not healthy to have feelings you can’t talk about.

LM: Yes, I’ve talked with many adoptees who struggle to talk about their real feelings. There’s always that fear you’re going to hurt someone. I was very interested to learn that you’re working on a new documentary, Moms Living Clean. The question that inspired this new film is an important one: Why can’t there be homes to help mothers keep their children?

SG: When I was pregnant I was in a home for unwed mothers, so I always wondered about that. I found this program in San Rafael that helps moms who are addicted to drugs get clean, learn parenting skills, and become self-sufficient all while having their children with them. There’s only about 35-40 programs like that in the country. That’s not even one per state. Most of the time, women have their children taken from them and then they have 18-22 months to prove that they’re clean. The reunification rate is low.

LM: Why is that?

SG: Because then these mothers have been made into birthmothers.

LM: I wonder how many people make that connection and understand what it means.

SG: We need to realize how devastating it is to take a child away from its mother—what a downward spiral that is emotionally for any woman. It was devastating to me and I wasn’t even dealing with addiction on top of it.

LM: How do you respond to some people out there who might say that these women don’t deserve to be moms?

SG: I’m not saying that children should stay in abusive homes and maybe not everybody who has children should be a mother. But what I can tell them is that I’ve been following these women for three years now and only one mother has totally relapsed. I think that was because she lost custody of her older daughter. So we need to become aware of how the war on drugs and drug policy directly impacts pregnant and parenting mothers. It’s another huge social stigma: a mother on drugs. People think she must be a bad person. But nobody asks how that happened to her. Nobody asks how we can help these moms.