Strange and Mournful Day Has A New Look

About two years ago, facing the annual twisting of the knife that is National Adoption Awareness Month (November), I and another EMS/BSE mother, Kitz, came up with two really good ideas, if I do say so myself. And, with the self-promotion going on in some adoption circles, this is mild by comparison. *wink, nudge

I came up with the idea for National Strange and Mournful Day (*TM) (you can check it out in my archives for 2006 around that time of the year) to be observed on the 30th of November, and Kitz came up with calling November "National Adoption BEwareness Day." All in all, not bad for a couple of middle-age broads with stories to tell.

I based Strange and Mournful Day on lyrics from Paul Simon's "Mother and Child Reunion." However it is lyrics within the body of the song that resonated rather that the issue of reunion, which is separate from the indignities and mistreatment that led to the surrender of our newborns.

Here is the song and I have high-lighted, in red, the parts that touched me where my experience is concerned.

Mother and Child Reunion

Words & music by Paul Simon

No I would not give you false hope,

On this strange and mournful day.

But the mother and child reu-nion

Is only a motion away,

Oh, little darling of mine.I can't for the life of me,

Remember a sadder day.

I know they say let it be,

But it just don't work out that way,

And the course of a lifetime runs,

Over and over again.

No I would not give you false hope,

On this strange and mournful day

But the mother and child reu-nion

Is only a motion away,

Oh, little darling of mine.I just can't believe it's so,

And though it seems strange to say,

I've never been laid so low,

In such a mysterious way,

And the course of a lifetime runs,

Over and over again.

But I would not give you false hope,

On this strange and mournful day,

When the mother and child reu-nion

Is only a motion away,

Oh, oh the mother and child reunion

Is only a motion away,

Oh the mother and child reu-nion

Is only a moment away.

This year, SMAAC will be observing National Adoption Bewareness Month and National Strange and Mournful Day, as an organization. We will be wearing our ribbons, black for grief and the darkness of the Era of Mass Surrenders, red for passion, anger and determination, and white for hope. Many of us will also attach our ribbon badges with a stud earring that is our lost infant's birthstone. When we have completed a ribbon, I'll show it on this blog so that any EMS/BSE moms who want to copy it and wear it, can do so.

The website for SMAAC is coming along and will be open for business, very soon. It is almost poetic that this should happen so close to, what I have started calling, "Black November." National Adoption Awareness Month is about as painful for us as that stupid "Birth-martyrs Day" thing that is observed on the Saturday before Mother's Day. The fact that the entire nation is expected to observe, as a good thing, our tragedies is proof of the arrogance of the industry and its proponents.

Very few people want to know how we were punished for our non-crime of fertility. I hear, still, the spiteful, nasty, hateful and judgmental person, usually a man, saying, "you didn't have to spread your legs." No, I guess we didn't, but the picture of us as a bunch of teen nymphomaniacs is erroneous and unfair. Most of us were in monogamous relationships. Some of us were raped. How many of you made it to your marriage bed with your virginity intact? Hmmmm?

It might not be comfortable for Mr. and Mrs. EMS-Era Adopter to acknowledge the fact that we were misjudged, misused and coerced, but it will soon be made more widespread public knowledge, so someone is just going to have to suck it up and realize that they raised children who were very much wanted by their real mothers.

I hope to see a lot of ribbons being worn, proudly, by mothers of adoption loss this coming November. The more people that ask us what the ribbons mean, the more the truth will be heard.