Defending Joan Wheeler

My name isn’t important, as this blog isn’t about me. No, I’m NOT Joan, nor did Joan put me up to writing this blog. I would like, however, to introduce you to her.

Joan Wheeler is a good friend of mine who is a social worker, author, and adoption reform activist. An adoptee herself, Joan has written a book entitled Forbidden Family- A Half Orphans Account Of Her Adoption, Reunion and Social Activism. This book was written to tell her story as she experienced it in order to bring to light the potential issues surrounding the way adoption is handled in the U.S. today. It is in no way aimed at self-agrandisement, nor is it meant as an attack on any individual or family.

Joan’s natural family consisted of a father who was widowed 3 months after her birth, three sisters and a brother. Having four children already, her father was advised to give her up for adoption, as no other family member stepped forward to offer help in maintaining the integrity of the whole family. Thus, Joan grew up as an only child in her adoptive family, not realizing she had four natural siblings. At the age of 18, however, that changed. She received a telephone call from one of her sisters. Joan’s book goes on from there.

The purpose of this blog is not primarily to recommend Joan’s book, although it is most assuredly worth reading, nor is it to promote adoption reform, although I agree that changes are much needed. What I’m trying to accomplish is to counteract the viscous, vindictive blogs of Joan’s three natural sisters. They have maliciously and spitefully had Joan’s book pulled from publication due to their egocentric and totally erroneous belief that the book was written about them. One of Joan’s sisters, Katherine Inglis, is the author of “Chayelet’s Blog.” Of the three sisters, Katherine is the least viscous. She confines her blog mainly to defending herself from imagined attacks from Joan. Nowhere do these fabricated attacks take place. She does, however, make a number of statements in her blog which are, at least in part, patently false, leading one to believe that Joan “uses” people. Having known Joan for some time, I’ve never felt that I’ve been used. In fact, Joan has never been anything but generous to me either in speech or action. I can only speak for myself, but having known her for some time, I dismiss that accusation completely.  Kathy will, however, from time to time, post comments on her other sisters blogs.

Another of Joan’s sisters is an entirely different kind of person. Ruth Sippel Pace has written two blogs. These are nothing more than vindictive, hateful attacks on Joan with no purpose other than to cause as much damage to Joan’s reputation as possible. The whining and complaining by Ruthie is repetitive, threatening, boring, foul-mouthed, bullying, and disgusting. Ruthie seems to think the world revolves around her, and she’s more than willing to assert that Joan’s book was meant as a personal attack against Joan’s natural family. The amazing thing is that Ruthie has enough time left after her postings to do anything else with her life. The number and lengths of her postings is mind-boggling, and only to be equaled by the sheer malice and vindictiveness of the content. One of Ruthie’s stated objectives is to take back her family’s honor. If she’s an example of her family’s honor, she’s more than welcome to it. Who wants “honor” that’s tainted with such hatred in the first place? Another stated objective is to honor her mother and other members of her family. I can’t help but feel, though, that her mother would be weeping tears of embarrassment and asking herself how her family members could have produced such a hateful human being. Far from taking the family honor back, Ruthie is throwing it on the dung heap. As these two blogs have been out there for years, one can only judge Ruthie’s mental stability for themselves. Personally, I pity her, and would hope that at some point, she would realize that something might not be quite right with her and seek the psychological therapy she needs. No mentally stable individual carries such hate, let alone acts on it, for as long a time as she has.     

Now onto Ruthie’s “yes man”, Gertrude McQueen. Gertrude believes she somehow owns Joan's life. She has managed to put together a hateful tirade in the form of a blog called "

Reclaiming the Sippel-Herr Family Honor

She seems to think that Joan "stold" the honor of those families. After reading that for only a few minutes, I wonder exactly what Gert's definition of the word "honor" might be. Honor has to do with the higher values, honesty, and the way in which one person treats another. If Gert thinks she's doing anything but dragging her precious "honor" through the mud, she's sadly mistaken. In her blog, she shows herself to be nothing other than a gloating, hate filled, bombastic, egomaniacal bully. Yes, through threat and intimidation, and misrepresentations, she and her sisters did manage to get Joan's publisher to discontinue publication of Joan's book. This shows that she and her other two sisters are incapable of reasoned arguement, and had no legitimate arguement to begin with.

 Having achieved their goal of restricting Joan's right to free speech, they aren't content. They continue to twist facts, threaten and harass anyone and everyone who has the audacity to call Joan a friend, and have even gone so far as trying to have world renowned professionals removed from their positions of employment simply for agreeing with Joan's positions regarding adoption reform. They have also, as busybodies and bullies will, attempted to discredit Joan in every aspect of the field in which she has earned her degrees. Whether one agrees with the objectives of adoption reform or not, it is only just to allow each person to be able to express their opinion and work productively to achieve their goals, yet at one time or another, members of this "Gang of Three" have gone to organizations which included Joan in their membership and have tried to have her removed. In some cases, again through lies, threats, and the sheer annoyance of trying to deal with the irrational behavior of these three, they have succeeded. And the reason for this? They didn't like it when Joan told the truth about herself and presented the truthful facts concerning how she was treated by both her natural and adoptive families. This is, from their point of view, undesireable. Unfortunately for them, through the vehicle of their blogs, they show the world how true the facts presented in Joan's book really are.

More to come. Please stay tuned! I know that as soon as this hits the net, I'll be attacked by at least one of these siblings. I'll then be more than happy to post their objections. I have no doubt that anyone having the audacity to stand up for the rights of one person to simply tell her story the way she has experienced it will be contacted by these "ladies". Rather than feeling threatened, I would invite anyone so contacted to post any communication to this site. Comments from Joan's sisters, however, will not be posted. They may respond in any way they wish on their own malignant blogs. If anyone wishes to find out what hate and absence of a purpose in life consists of, I would suggest you visit the blogs of one of the three afore mentioned sisters. It should be an valuable education about what to avoid if one is in any way charitable!