She's Baa-aaack

This is me in 2006, unhappy, unhealthy and weighing 312 lbs. I started on a serious weight-loss program after this picture was taken.

This is me in February of 2007, starting to feel the effects of the esophogitis and at about 240 lbs. I was in Hilton Head with some dear friends and eating Rolaids and Tums like they were candy.

And here I am on Christmas Morning, well at last and down to 178. Healthy, happy and glad to be alive.

2007 has been the year that was. Two trips to the hospital, a bout with severe depression, losing over 100 lbs., hubby having to have a basal cell cancer removed, my faithful car going dead on me in the middle of traffic and almost being hit by an oncoming idiot, getting a new PT Cruiser (Yay) and watching a lot of people, that I love and admire, caught up in some disturbing and frustrating problems within the anti-adoption community. We have started off the new year with hubby undergoing orthroscopic surgery for a badly torn meniscus. Life IS.

I am trying to re-charge the batteries for Anti-Adoption Truth, the MSN group I started as a place where the public could read the interactions and frustrations of those of us who have been gob-smacked by adoption. I would love it to be "neutral ground" where all involved can come and talk about the things that need to be spread around the web and placed in public view and also to rant about the things they hate about adoption...what it has done to us and to our children. I hope all my friends will read and heed and join back in the discussion side of things. It's a safe group...readable by the public, but the membership is by approval, only.

Its a bit late for this, but I do have a wish-list for 2008. At the top of it is the hope that my husband will finally give in and retire and we can move away from Florida. On another personal note, I am hoping that, when my reunited son gets out of prison in a few months, after a 6-year stay, he will be able to get his life on track and be comforted by knowing that I love him, no matter what. I am also hoping that this nastiness in Iraq will end and all our service people, especially my grandson, will be coming home. I think there has been enough death.

I have great hopes for the up-coming election. I would like to see the far-right religious faction out of politics and out of government. Mike Huckabee will definitely NOT get my vote. When this country went on its conservative binge, it threw the baby out with the bathwater and now many of our personal freedoms, including the right of a woman to make her own decisions about her body, are in danger of being lost if we don't make some major changes in our national and state governments.

In the world of natural family preservation, at the top of THAT list is the hope that the community of activists can come together in such a way as to start generating some real change and that the crimes against mothers, starting with those of us from the Baby Scoop Era, finally get addressed in a public forum. The time is long past for an official and very public apology. In recognizing what was done, in genocide-proportions, to unmarried mothers in the BSE, we will be a step closer to finding justice for all those who have had their children taken for adoption by the clever machinations of a major industry.

I am hoping that more young women will take advantage of the fact that birth control is available to them, even without their parents' consent, through local health departments. I am hoping that more mothers-to-be learn that there is another option other than surrender to adoption and will keep and raise their babies.

I am hoping that more states will get on the bandwagon and open the records for adult adoptees AND their mothers. No one should have to beg a judge for something that is theirs by right. In that vein, I am also hoping that adopted people and mothers can meet in the middle and realize that their best chance is in supporting each other, not just mothers supporting the adoptees.

I am hoping for healing of the wounds of the millions around the world and here who have felt the effects of this unnatural and painful separation. I am hoping for the fearful to no longer fear the truth, for the angry to understand and for the silent to speak up. Nothing can ever give us or our children back the years that we lost, but we can work together to help heal each other. We'll always carry the scar tissue, but it is past time for us to stop the bleeding.

Yep, it all sounds like a pipe dream, but dreams are good, according to the man whose life we observe today. He also had a dream and was killed trying to make it come true. So, Dear Granter of Hopes and Wishes, if not this year for the adoption stuff, then please, before I die, let me see a few of these things come to pass.

All Y'all think it over, y'hear?