Courage

I used to consider myself a bit of a wimp...a coward who was afraid to rock the boat or make enemies. Then I watched the 'Wizard of Oz' for about the umpteenth time, and I concentrated on the great Bert Lahr's character, The Cowardly Lion.

I realized that, sometimes, wisdom is mistaken for cowardice. When the enemy is too powerful to fight, it's just plain smart to retreat and start looking for another way to meet your goal. I also realized that, as the saying goes, " Courage is not the absence of fear but doing what you must in spite of that fear."

Now I don't know that I and my sisters in SMAAC and in other groups have acquired courage borne of our anger at the injustice done to us, or just reached a time in our lives when we don't give a rat's ass about what people might think of us. I suspect it is a combination of both. But I do know we are up against a powerful enemy and we are still shooting off our collective mouths at them. Sometimes, that makes me feel like Rocky, jogging in step with fists thrown up in the air at the top of the step. "Flying High" feels good.

The Wizard told the lion that the only thing he lacked was a medal commemorating his bravery, because all the other components for courage were in place, inside this dear creature. Our medals are ribbons...black for sorrow, red for passion and action and white for hope and love. We will be wearing our medals next month. We will be telling people who ask just what they mean. We will run afoul of our share of adopters and social workers and just plain people who "know someone" who had an adoption that turned out just frickin' wonderful. And we can stand there and say our piece and not back down because we have been given the gift of courage.

I made a comment, yesterday, that, until women stopped predating on their sisters and taking their babies, we wouldn't get very far as an emancipated gender. There are a lot of male adoption attorneys, facilitators and eugenicists who are banking on that weakness in our ranks. I called it "reproductive cannibalism" and the name fits. Now, if our sisters could stop looking on their less affluent, unmarried sisters as fields ripe for harvest and start helping them be mothers to their own, borne children, then the courage factor would shoot off the scale because we would all be on the same page. If we can put the coveting, the desire for 'motherhood at any cost' off the agenda and start really helping mothers and their children, we would be the ones to inherit the earth...not because we were meek, but because we showed the courage of our convictions, empathy and a united front.

With a united front, we could get between the new mothers-to-be and those that would take her infant for adoption BEFORE she is coerced into signing those papers. But to do that, we all have to stop sleeping with the enemy. The industry and the covetors are not going to do us any good. We have to band together and weave a safety net for these new moms. I envision a crowd of little families, with children growing up, knowing they were wanted by the women who bore them and the family from which they get their natural heritage.

It's a dream, but it's a good one and, we pray, it's doable.