My Garfield Monday...Read At Your Own Risk

I say that because I am pissed-off, down, dejected and frustrated and I don't want to bring the reader down with me. I do feel that I have to offer this warning...for anyone who wants to hold on to hope that this morass of idiocy we call adoption will ever find real resolution, or that the inherent injustice and corruption that is part of this legalized family scrambling will ever cease, or who just don't want their blood pressure to go through the roof, don't go read at the online forums. Alt.Adoption, adoption.com and the CU(*) forum will send you running and screaming to the TV or into the nearest book store for mindless escape. Let me suggest a good, Regency-era bodice-ripper or something outrageous on the sci-fi channel. (I do so admire my courageous sister moms who do leap into those cesspools of adoption excrement and engage in debate with the minions therein that seem to be able to live with the stench.)

More insidiously, it will make you wonder if what you do can possibly make a difference when you see our sisters, our children and the people, adopters, and wannabe adopters, who want/take our children holding on to the the fallacy of adoption with an iron grip, and treating anyone who dares to speak the truth with hostility, disdain and pseudo-intellectual spin-jobs designed to frustrate and anger. It's enough to drive a woman to OD on chocolate.

I have seen the so-called Triad, and it isn't. There is nothing in this adoption equation that even suggests three equal partners. All the compassion, all the understanding and all the effort seems to go into acting as apologists for the "poor infertile people" (who are usually that way by their own making), then to the adopted people who were "just infants who were given no choice" and should have THEIR records opened. We mothers of loss still sit at the bottom of the pile in that world, maybe graced by a pat on the head and used as mouthpieces if we will accept the name of good "birfmudder" and not ask for anything for ourselves. I will admit to wishing I could jack-smack some of my sister moms until they wake up to reality. I cringe in betrayed disbelief when I see a mother of loss being cosseted by the industry and its minions and even given awards for her "service" to the golden calf of adoption. It's heartbreaking.

Nope..us moms are supposed to be there for our children when they find us, not expect anything from them but give them all they require and more and never, ever harbor a negative thought about the possessive and self-entitled people they call their "parents." We are supposed to struggle for their rights and endorse the rights of wannabe adopters to take more of our children and nothing is left for us but someone saying, "well she shouldn't have spread her legs." Then, they say, when faced with the realities of the stories from "The Girls Who Went Away," "well, aren't we glad that doesn't happen anymore?" Bullcrap.

Let a mother of loss put forth the idea that rights to open records should be extended to include us and she gets shot down faster than a clay pigeon at a gun club skeet shoot. Let one of us object to being identified by the term "birth"mother and she is seen as making much ado about nothing and subjected to hearing some slap-happy good beemommy tell how proud she is to be called a birth thing. After all, we musn't, musn't offend the adopters....they bought and paid for our chidlren so they are numero uno mamacitas. Capice? Let some of us decide that we cannot abide any more of the abuse and tortuous mind-games to which some of our adult reunited children subject us and we are nasty, rejecting mommies that deserve to be hated. That's when I turn from my computer and reach for my paintbrush or a good book that has nothing to do with adoption.

In a few months, my husband will retire and we will be moving to a part of the country where we will have lots of space between us and our neighbors, where we will be hugged by the surrounding mountains and out of the madness of city life. I am giving serious thought to not even taking my computer with me. Somewhere in this life there has to be some peace of mind for the mother of loss. It's for sure that the industry, adopters and sadly, many of our own sisters and our own angry, resentful children are not going to offer us that boon. At 61, I find the uphill climb to educate and enlighten, pretty exhausting. The inequities in this entire melange of eugenics, entitlement and manipulation are staggering and saddening.

I am sick and tired of being the recipient of the assumed and unearned condescenion of adopters, angry adoptees and their good beemommie toadies. I am tired of the fact that they are struggling so hard to be right that they leave compassion and common sense in the dust of their frantic passage. I won't be a punching bag for the nasty customers that some very angry, uncounseled adopted people have become. I won't be a simpering handmaiden to the infertile or the self-entitled and I won't be a cash cow for the industry.

Maybe what I need is fresh ammo, some rest and a tall mountain at my back to hold off the pro-adoptionists in their single-minded campaign to discredit and demoralize anyone who isn't with the pro-adoption program. Maybe, I need to remember that I can be an original-family preservationist (and proud anti-adoptionist) and still have a life and that breaks from the fray are allowed and that every battery needs re-charging. I'm on my second cup of coffee and I have a fresh canvas on the easel. I'm sure it will get better.