Motherhood Deleted

November 30th..The Day of the Mothers

2011-11-30T11:04:00.002-02:00

Today is National Strange and Mournful Day, an observance that began in response to the designation of November as National Adoption Awareness Month. We mothers wear our ribbons all month and tell anyone who asks what they mean. The last day of the month is an observance of the validity of our motherhood and the dreadful nature of our loss.

I came up with the name because certain lyrics from Paul Simon's "Mother and Child Reunion" resonated, so deeply, with me. All through this past month, many Exiled Mothers have been wearing our ribbon badges of black for mourning, red for righteous indignation and passion for our cause and white for hope and healing. Some of us will adorn our ribbons with the birthstones of our children that were taken for adoption. I have a diamond and a pearl for my ribbon....April and June are the months in which I gave birth to, and was forced to surrender, my two oldest children.
While we refer to the lyrics of Simon's wonderful tune, this observance is not about reunion, but about the devastating effects of loss to adoption on the mother. I have high-lighted the pertinent lyrics in red and boldface.

MOTHER AND CHILD REUNION
music and lyrics 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 cant 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.

While most of the support groups online for Mothers of adoption loss tend to deal with the ups and downs of reunion (and God/dess knows, it is a rough ride), SMAAC is focused on the pain and injustice of our ordeal leading up to and including the "Strange and Mournful Day" when we realized our babies were lost to us.

So today, on the last day of what we now call "Adoption BEwareness Month," we honor ourselves and remember the injustice of the EMS/BSE and renew our determination to be an active and vocal part of bringing justice to the mothers.

And to my daughter and my son that were lost to me in those dark days, always know that I loved you and losing you was neither my choice nor my wish. Some day, some how, some one is going to have to make restitution for what was lost to us. Not in dollars, but in acknowledgement, atonement and public awareness of the pain and the dark underbelly of the adoption myth.

Happy Strange and Mournful Day, Sisters. I am so sorry you had to suffer this

loss.

*I wanted to add this post script to this repeat article. It is just in the last year that I have realized the full import of the loss of my children. I am and will always be their mother. But something twisted happened when they were raised by other people and it is my sad realization that my babies are gone forever. In their place, are people who share my DNA, but not my values or vision or cultural orientation, who look like me, but who don't really know me for who I truly am. Surrender is forever and adoption is the great destroyer of the person that might have been. My children are tied to mothers who never knew them on that deep, cellular level that is the natural connection and to whom they are unrealistically loyal, even after one of those mothers passed away. It doesn't hurt as much as it used to, but it still makes me angry.

Guest Post; Potent, Passionate and Political

2011-11-28T11:45:00.002-02:00

My daughter, Kerry Henline Klein, sent me this message last night. She is without work and times are hard for her and her Significant Other. Being senior citizens on a fixed income,there is little we can do to help. She finally boiled over and this is the result.

Between Thanksgiving and now (not to mention everything else going on in my life) I have a lot to think about. Life these days is hard. It's not easy or fun making ends meet day to day for most folks, especially the older generation and those who do the jobs that most consider beneath them. But we do those jobs to live and help those who are retired and we want to make sure they can live the rest of their lives in reasonable comfort. Then there is making sure the children in our lives have food and an education...free education??? YEA RIGHT! Even a college education you work and pay for yourself doesn't mean you will be able to have a good life these days.

I do remember a day if you worked hard for a day's pay you got a fair day's pay. The last few years I worked for 911 I didn't even get a cost of living raise, yet I had to be there and was expected to neglect my life and family should a huge catastrophic event happen. 9/11 happened... the next few days at 911 dispatch were so quiet. So quiet it was scary. It seems that things have gone to hell from 9/11.

I'm tired of those with money making more money and thinking they are doing the 99% a favor by giving them a job that can't even pay a month's worth of bills. SCREW YOU! We need Kennedy and Clinton back in office together! Back when they were president even the homeless had a chance to get back on their feet! Republicans did nothing but screw what America is SUPPOSED to be at the behest of their corporate owners.

I rarely speak my mind on most political or religious issues, but I am sick and tired of being on the bottom of the pile in the 99%! I remember when Clinton was in office.... life was actually better for the "little" people. We are the BACK BONE OF AMERICA! And when the BACK BONE IS happy.... so should the "privileged" be.... but NOOOOO! They are too greedy and selfish and care NOTHING for their fellow HUMANS WHO MAKE SURE THEY HAVE WHAT THEY WANT...NOT NEED! We struggled to have a good Thanksgiving because of CORPORATE-OWNED REPUBLICANS AND CONSERVATIVES! To hell with all of you! I want my life back! All I want to do is earn an honest days wage and live a normal life.That was what America was about to begin with! Pardon me but... SCREW YOU REPUBLICANS AND 1%! I have rights too! And I'll be DAMNED if I won't take them back, even if I have to take them from YOU!

Start looking over your shoulder... you're about to have to live like a REAL American again.... try WORKING! I'm there and I will bring you down. If something catastrophic were to happen, you would be the 1st to go down.... I have a good chance of surviving.... screw you. 1%... you are screwing yourself by breaking the nation's backbone! That backbone will bite back and take what THEY MADE. You sure as hell didn't nor could you do the really hard stuff! You'd BEST think really hard or you will eventually regret it.

This, from one of the 99%, is a promise... not a threat...a promise. Sleep tight asshats, republicans and the just plain ignorant idiots born with a silver spoon. There will be a day of reckoning, and that silver spoon won't mean S***! And who will you depend on to survive???? Think about it dumbasses. I know I will... I doubt you will, if I have a say in it.

I need my teeth taken care of... I can't come up with the $3000 to have them pulled much less the money for my choppers! I need glasses... I can't pay the $500 bill to get an exam and a decent pair of glasses so I can see properly. I need to go to my DR for other health reasons too many to mention... I IGNORE THEM! If I end up with cancer.... guess what... I die in pain cause I have no insurance. Bet I won't even get a Tylenol to ease the pain as if it will do any good.

Because I actually will work instead of thinking my fellow humans are farm animals to be used, this is my future. Let the tables turn... I would LOVE to see the 1% hold their own! LOLOL!!!! Plant a field...harvest a field... YEAH RIGHT! Sweep a floor, wash your own clothes, grow your own food, prepare your own meals, take care of a medical issue with a little common sense. The 1% could NOT survive without the 99%! Watch out the 1%.... you are going to be in for a RUDE awakening soon! We will NOT allow you to run us down or treat us as slave labor. Our founding Fathers would be sooooo ashamed of you! America is supposed to be a chance for one and all.... you're trying make it a Hitler-type fascist state!

Just wait until you have no one to wipe your ass when you're sick, or cook your food or feed you or grow/buy your food.... you get the drift. Try hemming and mending your own clothes...I dare you. Yes... I'M F****** PISSED AND HAVE HAD ENOUGH! I'm tired of not being able to do simple things that the 1% toss around like candy. Oh... GAS IN MY CAR! FOOD ON MY TABLE! FIX MY CAR! GO TO THE DR! A NEEDED NEW PAIR OF SHOES, A BADLY NEEDED NEW BRA! Need I go on???? I've had it... the gloves are off.

My daughter is proud and has always worked for what she needed. She just wants a chance to work and make the money she needs to live. This is not what I envisioned for my children. I understand your anger, Pooh. I am angry, too and my heart hurts for you. I love you.

INCOMING!!

2011-11-27T10:35:00.007-02:00

Ah, it is that time again. As we approach the end of November and the Strange and Mournful aspect of our observation of this heinous month of adoption idolatry, another adopter/facilitator/good adoptee searches for, and finds, my old post about what anti-adoption really means.

"GB's Mom" is the latest of the irate, pro-adoption souls to lob the "bitter bomb" at me without even knowing me. GB, in answer to your "comment," you go ahead and stay in your world, as you put it, and I am sorry you are so willfully clueless.

Here is said comment and you should be honored that I gave it this much attention: "GB's Mom has left a new comment on your post "What Anti-Adoption Means": I am sorry you are so bitter. You stay in your world, I will stay in mine." Well, Hell. That sounds like a deal!

Sometimes I see, in these frustrated adoption defenders, the 6-year-old, arguing with classmates and holding on to the myth of Santa Clause for dear life. A glimpse of the true pain that comes with this unnatural separation is too much for some to take. They hold on to the Industry mythology like a life ring in a sea of turbulent truth. The only defense they have is to call us "bitter." AND each one that does so thinks that they are the original with that assessment and are so proud of their bon mot. I tend to get the giggles, now, when I see that "bitter" bomb flying through the air only to be a dud when it lands.

It would be right to call us angry. We have a right to that anger. We were screwed by more than the fathers of our babies. We were placed into the maw of a beast...the social service and adoption industry...and left to sink into compliance by coercion. Not a great way to spend a big chunk of your younger years, I might add. And not a single person has stepped up to acknowledge the injustice that was done to us and to our infants. But we are also survivors who love, laugh and live. This battle is a PART of our lives. It is not the sum total of our lives.

GB's (Can I call you GB's?), don't confuse righteous anger and a desire for justice and change with bitterness. Of course, if you follow that advice, you might learn something you don't want to know. Meanwhile, I have a life, with husband, children, doggies, family and friends whom I love and who love me. I guess they like the taste of "bitter." We're riding out to the coast, today. Excuse me while I go enjoy my bitter life. (That's sarcasm, I say, that's sarcasm, kid!) *giggle

I JUST HAD TO ADD THIS ONE: Someone commented;"Anonymous (of course) has left a new comment on your post "INCOMING!!":

@1:30 Anon: I don't know about her older kids, but I don't think she "purchased her babies from a baby broker." The younger child is from a disrupted adoption. The older child has FASD, among other medical issues. Perhaps the mother that chose to drink excessively during pregnancy wasn't fit to parent?

I understand your pain, I really do, but I don't think she is representative of people that buy babies. I don't think she is the face of your anger. If anything, she is doing a service, taking in (dare I say "unwanted?") children with special needs. I am sure you two can find much to disagree about, but I don't think she should be the object of your scorn for parenting these children.

To which I must say; That's all well and good. But GB'sMom CAME HERE FIRST, with the 'bitter bomb' insult. She got what she deserved. It seems that it is OK for adopters to make any nasty judgment of mothers and those of us who really "felt the pain," but nothing should be said in return? I think not, Anonymous. And, what effort was really made to help any of the families of said children? Do you know anything beyond what she and the social workers have said? If you don't think she should receive any criticism, then you might want to advise her against making such comment about people she doesn't know. RKW

Lisi...I didn't troll GBM's blog. Anyone can reference any open URL on the 'net. As far as I am concerned, this didn't start with me but it ends HERE. On to other things. RKW

Headaches and Heartaches

2011-11-01T09:52:00.005-02:00

I have been sadly remiss in posting, this past month. Between health issues, concerns for family members and the national angst we are all experiencing, the issues of adoption just seemed to take a big, back seat with me. I have had to deal with headaches and heartaches of the personal variety. Adoption is still not numero uno on my agenda, but November has reared its ugly head and National Adoption Awareness Month is upon us. I gag as I type.

My friend, Musing Mother, posted a very relevant and insightful piece on the plight of Mothers from our era. La Dia de los Madres is a take on the Mexican Day of the Dead and that is how I and many others felt after our journey through the surrender of our infants to the adoption machine, back in the day.

I can't help but link those feeling to the feelings many are beginning to experience just being middle-class and poor Americans. We have awakened to the fact that we have taken much for granted and while we were doing so, the greed machine was working overtime. Now, substitute your flesh and blood, the child you carried inside you for nine months, for that lost job, home, income and self-esteem, and you get the picture.

I have my "I am the 99%" button, but I will also be wearing it next to my "Strange and Mournful" ribbon (pictured). I am unable to camp out in downtown Orlando, but I have spent some time there with the local "Occupy Group." I hope there are those who will ask me about my ribbon when I return to wave a sign for a couple of hours. I have some good analogies to use for their edification.

I have always loved November. The promise of approaching winter, the smell of dry leaves on the ground, Thanksgiving with feasting and family...all have special significance for me. But along came this co-opting of one of my favorite months by the adoption machine, adherents and fans and they are doing their best to ruin this month. Well, I won't let them!

November will always be those things I love, PLUS, it will also still be "National Adoption Bewareness Month." Let the one-percenters who reap the bloody booty of the adoption industry put that one in their turkey and stuff it! If there ever was an example of the misuse and abuse of capitalism, adoption, the traffic in human children is it. The nation of the bottom line has brought us to a new low, but it was well on its way in the Era of Mass Surrenders (EMS and/or BSE) .

Let's hope the turn of events on a national level will allow for open minds on this issue for a change. The brainwashing the public has received that allowed this financial fiasco is no different from the mythology they have been force-fed about adoption. Just like Wall Street, Citizens United, The Tea Party and the Dominionists, Big Adoption is just about as harmless and benign as a nest of angry rattlesnakes. And, as many recent news stories from both here and abroad have proven, this Industry is just as corrupt as the rest.

Corrupt, greedy, entitlements for the self-entitled, all these apply. But I will not let this entity take my November from me. I think I will make a new sign to wave. How about, "Screwed by Big Adoption?" Meanwhile, in the vernacular of my generation, I will continue to groove on MY November.

What's Really Important?

2011-10-03T14:39:00.005-02:00

I have had little to nothing to say about THE issue of adoption in the past few posts. It is hard for some mothers and adoptees to understand, but, at this point, adoption is the last thing on my mind. Like millions of others, I am holding on to my last shred of hope that we will survive this unrest, corruption and intrusion into our government by greed and religion. I know it has been happening for a while, now, but I was one of those who really believed it would never get this far.

One thing I do know is that there is little to no hope for adoption "reform" and uniform open records if we get a president out of the current batch of Republican wannabes. Even the undeclared GOP candidates make me shudder when I think of them taking the reins of the executive branch. The Congress is a playground for a bunch of greedy children and the future of our nation as the great country it was is in doubt.

Funny how pet causes and personal interest causes can take a back seat when basic survival becomes an issue. People had criticized the "Occupy" movement, saying it is unfocused and unorganized. I have read the mission statement from the Occupy Wall Street organization and it is very coherent and inclusive. A visit to the Facebook Page and to the links provided will give anyone with questions a lot of good information. This and the upcoming election are the issues that now consume me.

It is imperative to me that we keep corporate greed and ANY religion out of our government. I watched the first part of the PBS documentary on Prohibition last night and the folly of trying to legislate religious morality by altering the constitution or making such laws was made clear. Before anyone tries to point out the Civil Rights act, let me stress that there is a difference between making bigotry illegal, an impossible task, and making laws giving all people a right to a decent life. That is what is ethical, not what is dogmatically moral.

The lack of ethics in the financial community and Congress got us into this mess WITH OUR PERMISSION. You say you didn't give your permission? Well, every time we don't vote, or we don't take the time to educate ourselves about a candidate or issue or we depend on sound bites and whatever someone else says to make a political decision, we are handing the government over to these entities.

Now, a lot of good people, who are deeply into their religion, are giving knee-jerk approval to the Dominionists who are hand in glove with the Corporations in wanting to make the government theirs. Our way of life is not all that is at stake. Our most precious and personal rights are in danger of being destroyed by those who would re-fashion the Constitution to suit them.

For a long time, I thought that the populace was too smart to let these theocrats and fat cats pull one over on them. But the rise (and the slow fall) of the Tea Party has persuaded me that I have given many of my fellow Americans too much credit in the common sense department. The main stream media now relates to its audience on about an eighth-grade level. No longer champions of the truth, the media has bowed to its corporate ownership and watered down its message. Education and penal institutions are in the process of being privatized. The dumbing down of America is almost complete.

I don't want this to be the kind of world left to my four great-grandchildren. I am sick of watching my children, who should have been able to do better with their lives than their parents, struggling to hold on along with millions of other. And I am tired of hearing obnoxious media pundits, both religious and political, spouting ignorance and nonsense for the consumption of those who don't want to use the good brain with which Nature endowed them.

What is really important is that we save our nation from the Big Corporate and Theological Brothers and ourselves from a slide into ignorance. It's a simple matter of survival.

They're There! Where's The Media?

2011-09-24T17:39:00.003-02:00

Last Saturday, 2000 people occupied and marched on Wall Street. They have camped out in a park. They are standing up and speaking out for the majority of us who can't be there. This is no longer "life as usual" people. Yet, there was no coverage on any of the major news programs.

We need to complain to the mainstream media. They will cover the nasty little Westboro Baptist bunch, sometimes numbering less than 15 people when they spew their homophobic hatred at the funerals of our service people. But 2000 people, assembling peacefully to see that the truth is heard..they are suspiciously silent. Is this coming from the top where media moguls are wanting these folks to go away, unheard?

This is a movement that is spreading, a movement that doesn't have the deep pockets of corporate mercenaries behind it. It is you and me and young people who can't find jobs and the elderly who are watching their hopes for a dignified retirement drift away. I worry about where all this is headed, but I admire and support them for their efforts.

We are living in a time when, in the name of greed and dogma, people are willing to see our government and our nation go down for the count. We are seeing, to our shame, the man holding the most important position in the free world being treated with disrespect and hostility. And yet he remains a gentleman.

For those whose attention is still solely on adoption issues, let me add my opinion here, for what it is worth. If one of the GOP candidates is nominated and elected, the chances for real reform, open records and the rights of single mothers will go down the tubes. You might as well kiss that goodbye, especially if one of the Tea Party Darlings is elected.

Three years ago, I was elated and joyful that our nation seemed to have overcome racism to the point that we would elect a well-qualified man of mixed race to the Presidency. Now I realize that there were a lot of good old boys and girls who didn't think it would happen and the hatred boiled to the surface. Now I am fearful, for the President, for our nation, for my family, my loved ones and my friends. Something nasty is happening.

The hatred of the teabaggers is a festering boil on the face of the USA. If we seemed ugly to the outside world before, just combine corporate interests with the racism and adamant fundamentalism of the baggers and you have the end of freedom, the Constitution, and life as we know it and our downfall will be very public and very disgraceful. Poverty and hunger will make rebels of many, and corpses of more.

Doomsday scenarios are not easy to take, and I am not saying that the world will end, but it will definitely change, for the worse, if the Republican/Tea Party/ALEC Power Brokers get their way. We can only stop this from happening by making a lot of very public noise and making enough of it that we can't be ignored. The people occupying Wall Street need our support. So here are a few email addresses and phone numbers through which the national media can be contacted. This is just the TV news departments. You can also easily Google the big-name newspapers and they have email addresses to send letters to the editors.

ABC News: netaudr@abc.com

CBS News: Phone: 212-975-4321

CNBC: info@cnbc.com

CNN:cnn.feedback@cnn.com

MSNBC: world@msnbc.com

NBC: 212-664-4444

PBS/Newshour With Jim Leherer: newshour@pbs.org

Let's get these reporters out there covering this story. I don't want to see these people leave, dejected and feeling they have failed us. Help them.

Dear Republicans

2011-09-23T12:17:00.004-02:00

Dear Republicans,

I'm not sure, but I hope I am writing this to a group of real people. You see, I probably am a naive idealist, but I have to think that there has to be a way to get the realities of life across to you. I am a senior citizen. Yet, I still have hope that there is compassion and decency in the vast majority of human beings.

I know you don't want there to be a Democratic president. I fear you REALLY don't want a mixed-race, Democratic president more than anything. But is it fair for you to engineer an economic disaster that will take us all down, except for those of you who are wealthy, just to try to destroy one man? And why do you seem to think that none of us see what is happening and why? I feel, somehow, disrespected as a person, a woman and a senior by the tactics you are using. I am neither blind, brainwashed or ignorant.

In my lifetime, I have seen statesmanship left behind and replaced with political idealogues, I have seen the incremental destruction of everything socially and politically good that came out of the first 70 years of the last century. There are babies out there, on the ground, crying because they have been thrown out with the bathwater. I have seen the decline of truth and the rise of the spin doctor. I have seen a nation grown so lazy that they depend on media sound bites rather than researching the candidates before voting. I have seen an educational system so crippled that it is turning out functional illiterates.

I started out as an activist in the area of adoption, specifically, coerced surrenders of the Era of Mass Surrenders. I always looked in wonder at the attitude of adopters or PAPs who felt they were entitled to the child of another woman, just because they wanted one. Now I see where they get it. Most of you are attorneys that have been elected to Congress and I have never seen such a bunch of self-entitled people in my life, except, perhaps, the corporations and financial fat cats and hedge funders that line your pockets.

Yet you call the pittance that we have worked for and paid into all our working lives an "entitlement?" I call Social Security a promise and a deal. I call Medicare necessary and paid for with OUR money. And I call social programs that help feed, house and educate the less fortunate among us, especially children, COMPASSION.

Capitalism, on its own, is a ravenous beast that consumes and acquires with no thought of consequences. Without social programs to balance things out, our system becomes even more corrupt and ugly than it already is. We WILL fight for the social conscience that keeps our nation from becoming a complete corporate-owned plutocracy and theocracy.

And yes, while we are at it, what IS IT with this evangelical overload? Not only have many of your number thrown the Constitution to the ground, but with this aspect, you tread all over it with mud on your shoes. America is a nation of multiple beliefs and non-beliefs and it should remain that way. I don't think "freedom of religion" means just freedom for one segment of believers.

President Obama has offered the olive branch more than once and you have hurled it back in his face. Oh you good Christians, you. He has offered programs to help our nation and you look, not at the merits of the program (similar to many passed in bipartisan actions over the years) but at the source of that program and you sneer and reject. We want that program. We need it. But you are in that "my way or the highway" groove.

I know a lot of self-proclaimed Republicans that seem to be decent people and they are looking somewhat embarrassed, these days. They still puff up and flash their "Nobama" buttons, but they are wondering what happened to their 401Ks and retirement as well. And they are not real keen on Social Security cuts or Medicare cutbacks. You're walking a slippery slope with those subjects.

You want us to blame President Obama for his predecessor's excesses and your stubborn pique and that's not representing the people. That is a vendetta and not a pretty one. Maybe you need to step back and remember that you, whether you are well to do or not, are just one of the herd and that the strength of the working class makes or breaks any nation.

Of course, I look at the picture of the current GOP candidates and find myself, an agnostic, praying that none of these people defeat the President next year. That would probably put an end to my American citizenship. I have lost trust in you and in your motivations. So hope you don't win 2012 or you will have a nasty situation on your hands. Hungry, desperate people can get angry and determined.

I'll just get out if I can, should that happen. I'm too old for your nonsense. Here's some truth for you.

Sincerely,

Robin Kinney Westbrook

Legacy of Greed and Arrogance

2011-09-10T09:51:00.004-02:00

9/11 has left us with a curious and terrifying legacy; asshats, motherf***ers, and bullsh***ers as far as the eye can see, bad things happening to good people, bad people getting all the dough and all the power, and good people watching their homes burn or washed away in a flood and people in Africa starving while a bunch of pin-headed, self-righteous redneck, evangelical elitists and greedy power-mongers glad-hand, campaign and make back-room deals.

These influence brokers used the fear generated by the cowardly attacks of 9/11, ten years ago, to erode our freedoms and break the back of our government. Bin Laden got what he wanted.

Racist bullies, liars and hypocrites sit in their snug little ivory towers and rain down hate rhetoric. Inane/insane pundits burst our eardrums with their messages of hate....This goes beyond party and philosophy and into the heart of the human race where it is festering and about to blow. They wanted to use fear to control the populace. Well, good job, Sh**eaters! I am definitely afraid. But controlled? Not yet.

I fear a return to the dark ages, an elite class that celebrates the ignorance and fear of the masses while they control access to everything that makes life better...education, creativity, art, music, freedom. I fear a time when the public becomes nothing more than voiceless drones. I fear a bloody rebellion, a destruction of something so precious, lost because it was taken for granted.

I see the seething anger and/or the exhausted resignation of the millions who just want to work for a living. I see a wife entering a church to ask for food. I see a man gathering scrap metal so that he can sell it to buy gas to look for work. I see elderly people wondering if they will die in poverty.

And I see a large dark cloud harboring a hideous, tentacled, Lovecraftian monster with many faces; Koch, Murdoch, Bush, Perry, Beck, Coulter, Rove, Cheney, Palin, Bachmann, Robertson, Cain, Paul, Devos, Exxon Mobile and tar sand blasters, pipeline runners and mountain cappers...not enough room to list all of the dastards.

I see book-burning, church-run "education" and emotions, especially love in any form, outlawed and punishable by law. Orwell just had the year wrong. Atwood is a visionary as well. History and literature have warned us but we haven't heeded the warnings and are beginning to pay the price. "Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it."

Ten years ago, we saw the results of hate and religious fanaticism. It cost the lives of thousands of innocent people and left a scar on the face of our nation. I find it absolutely flabbergasting that the parallels are not recognized in the antics of Robertson, the Tea Party and praying candidates who fall to their knees while their states burn. Fascism isn't socialism, People!! It's intolerance and fear and iron control and fanaticism and it isn't just Islam that has a claim to those attributes. It is here in the fundamentalist, evangelical, end-of-timers Christian Dominionists and we should fear them just as much as the Arab piloting an airliner. There is an ACTIVE campaign to replace Democracy with control through fear, and to replace the Constitution with the bible. And YES, that would be a bad thing!!!

My time is coming soon, when I won't have to worry about it. I am in my "golden years" (*snort) and the worse will probably come after I am dead and gone. But I have children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren and a legacy of ignorance, fear and poverty is not what I would want for them.

For every time I didn't speak up, for the times when I was younger when I was too self-involved and reacted rather than researched, for all the votes I didn't cast because I was too "busy," I am so sorry, my Dear Ones. As long as I still have breath in me, I will protest and write letters and keep the DC switchboards buzzing. I will support that which speaks to the rights of all and fight that which gives the best to a few.

I just hope we aren't too few, too late.

Distilling Knowledge

2011-09-05T11:06:00.003-02:00

Kerry and Sam...1990

When I first reunited with my surrendered daughter and then my son, I knew that I was entering a strange land. All the maternal feelings were there, but there were kinks in the chain. Little did I understand at the time, or for years, how that gap in years, and missing out on sharing their childhoods would dash any expectations of a normal relationship and cause a lot of hurt and frustration.

I can see jealousy in my surrendered children, towards their siblings...not hostile but wistful that my raised children have something with me that they don't. It speaks to the importance of shared experience.

You see, my raised children, Kerry and Sam, were my babies, then my toddlers, then my little girl and little boy, then my rebellious teens before they became my adult children. I can recall, with them, special moments, traumas and happy times. My surrendered children were my babies and then they were gone. All the in-between was lost and I admit to searching, hungrily, in their faces for the children they were rather than the adults they now are. That was MY bad.

In 1993, I was hit by a storm of emotion and confusion, with two reunions in one year, just as I was going though a very tough time in my marriage. It took me a long time to accept and mourn the fact that what I had lost would never be returned. Those precious formative years belonged to someone else. And to say I was displeased with what took place with my babies during those years would be an understatement.

I tend to over-analyze a lot. And often, I have to stand back and quit going around my arse to get to my elbow. Accepting what I can't change has always been a challenge for me, but I find myself in a much better state of mind when I do that very thing.

Yes, I am the Mother of the two children lost to adoption...their true Mother. But they are not, nor will they ever be my little girl and little boy. Those years will always belong to someone else.

My daughter's adopters are deceased, but they are still a living presence in her. She often posts tributes to them on her FB page. Now that is not the norm for children raised by their natural parents, but what the hey...whatever floats her boat. I just cannot read those paeans without feeling a bit of a knife in my gut. I have to wonder if that is why she does it.

I feel the family connection more keenly through my granddaughter and her children. I wasn't there when she was a baby, but then lots of grandparents weren't. Our relationship is easier, laughter comes to us more readily and we don't try to burden each other with our troubles. And she gave me a gift when we visited while I was in San Antonio....the gift of her truth and the verification of a lot of my suppositions. The weight of the world was lifted from my shoulders.

Now I know that in any dysfunctional family, the truth is usually somewhere in the middle. But this is the first time I have really listened to my granddaughter and heard her pain and frustration. Once I had boiled down all this information to the inner essence, I knew that I had to distance myself from a toxic relationship. I would do no one any good by enabling them.

So here I sit, on Labor Day, having been greeted by my raised children and my granddaughter, and getting on with the bigger fish I have to fry. We have to figure out how to make our move to WV, on hold for four years, now, due to a badly damaged economy and corrupt, political shenanigans. We also have to re-work our budget, deal with the expenses we have without incurring any more and make sure we are covered, health-wise. One of my raised children is going through a terrible time and needs a strong shoulder on which to cry. Oh Bla Di, Oh Bla Da and all that.

And even that pales when I remember riding through the countryside of Texas, to the west of San Antonio, and seeing the devastation of drought and heat that is ruining the livelihood of millions. I watch the news when I feel especially brave and I have to do what little I can to aid in preventing our Nation from going completely down the tubes greased by greed and arrogance. I can write, I can vote and I can talk. Like I said..bigger fish to fry.

And as the song says, "You got your troubles, I got mine." My little girl and little boy were taken from me and I have accepted that. And maybe that tragedy will be a learning tool for someone else and a preventative from falling into the same trap. Instead, I am concentrating on what I do have, and I am one fortunate woman. I need to remind myself of that on a continuing basis.

Sometimes, you just have to boil it all down to the basics, distill your knowledge and go with the essence. Simple, but not easy...but then the simplest truths are never easy to take.

Life Is.......

2011-08-24T17:48:00.004-02:00

When I was small, my first memories are of being held, coddled and played with by my parents and my relatives and I thought, "Life is warm and caring."

When my father left us in my fifth year, and I watched my mother cry, I thought, "Life is scary and troubling."

When I suffered a severe burn on my hand as a child, I thought, "Life is physical pain."

When I would play with my toys or my sisters and friends, I thought, "Life is fun."

In school, I thought, "Life is working and learning."

When I approached and reached puberty, I thought, "Life is confusing and full of strange feelings and thoughts."

When I became interested in boys and had my first serious boyfriend, I thought, "Life is being in love."

When I was a single, pregnant teen, sent away by my family, abandoned by my lover, alone, frightened and told I was unfit to raise my own baby, I thought, "Life is about debasement, loss and shame."

Each time I gave birth and felt that wonderful feeling when I held my child, I thought, "Life is about fleeting moments of joy."

When I met, married and lived, day to day, with my wonderful husband, I thought, "Life is mature, comfortable yet still exciting love."

As I struggled on, as we all must, through all the different highs and lows of life, I learned that life is all of that and more...joy, grief, peace, worry, fun, fear, loss, serendipity and epiphanies. Some manage life better than others. Some can't deal with it at all and decided to opt out. Others in my life have shown me the meaning of courage, self-honesty and, as my late aunt put it, "keeping on, keeping on." My husband honors his lost child by making his life the best one he can make.

But the most important thing is that I think life is worth living. In all its joys and sorrows, it is a miracle created by the Universe and something which each person makes as good as they want it to be despite the pitfalls.

But that good life can only be made in the environment of true freedom, where with rights come responsibilities to each other and our world and where each person is free from ANY kind of oppression, be it physical, financial or spiritual. We must be free from the dogma of the self-righteous. We must be free from ignorance, want and hunger. We must be free to learn, to explore and to be enriched by art, science, literature and music.

That is why we must not let the direction that is being taken by the extremist Right determine our future. We must say NO to fascism in the name of religion and NO to corporate person-hood and the idea of alms to the rich. I don't know about any of you, but none of my family, friends and associates are named Exxon Mobile. We must continue to say NO to racism and the encroaching idea of a Christian theocracy. This country was founded by people who felt strongly that the Church and the State should always be separated by law and logic.

So, to counter this, we must say YES to progress, YES to equality, YES to compassion, and YES to all Americans sharing the load.

When we do that, we are saying YES to a life worth living for ourselves and the generations to come.

Footnote* A friend posted this quote and I thought it appropriate to the news of the day;"A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side." — Aristotle

Send 'Em In

2011-08-22T10:04:00.007-02:00

The GOP candidates arrive for another debate! It's Tea Party Time!!

I never thought I would see the day that a group of candidates for the highest office in our nation would deliberately tell whoppers, misinform voters and generally show their racist bias in such an overt manner. I know that there have been lies told by politicians from day one in this nation and others. But to do it in such an in-your-face manner is criminal. The fact that there are those who buy into these lies is just plain sad.

For years, the lies about adoption persisted. The fact that the truth is coming from those of us who experienced the mistreatment, grief and shame makes no difference to the spin doctors. We just get dismissed as bitter and angry.

Now, we are being lied to about everything we know to be true and they just don't care. Faux news will make things up as they go. The GOP candidates try to rewrite history. They don't know as much as a 6th-grader knew about history and civics in my day.

We are approaching an Idiocracy and, if you don't believe me, go visit the "Birthmom Buds" on Facebook, listen to a speech by Mispeak Bachmann or try to argue with an avid "birther" about the fact that the President WAS born in the US. Willful ignorance is going to take this nation down if we don't stand up, not just for the rights of individuals as put forth by the Constitution, but for TRUTH.

I can see the drive for open records being detoured by the Corporate Congress and the state leggies who have had their palms greased. I can see no chance, at all, for the "sinful, sexual" Mothers to even ask for, much less receive the justice they deserve. How can we when we still have idiots who use the old "no one held a gun to your head" and "you're the one who spread your legs" arguments and think them valid?

We are no longer trudging up a long hill. We are climbing Everest with no equipment except the frail rope of truth. Like everything else in this corporate culture, truth has become a commodity and can be anything anyone wants it to be if they have the money and the connections. We have entered the Twilight Zone of American politics. Statesmen have been replaced by celebrities and proselytizers. There is NO government of, by and for the people. It has become the playground of the Kochs and the Murdocks and the DeVoes and their ilk.

It is a truly bizarre circus and the clowns are truly scary. But we must have clowns, so send 'em in. Oh. Don't bother. THEY'RE HEEEEEER.

Of Forests and Trees

2011-08-21T14:09:00.006-02:00

I have come to ponder, recently, if I have kept my focus too narrow in recent years. While I was speaking out for justice for Mothers from the EMS and open records for adult adoptees, a lot was happening in the good, old US of A. For instance, we were slowly being bought up and sold out by corporate interests and their government toadies and we woke up, one day, to a massive recession and fears for our futures. Say what you will about bubbles and busts...someone screwed us over.

Suddenly we had Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, Ann Coulter, Rick Santorum, and all the rest of them stirring the under-educated and over-churched to a frenzy. Where had I been? I had been dismissing these wannabe editorial pundits as insignificant and then I saw what they had managed to do. They played to the lowest common denominator and they played it well. I mean, how smart can the teabaggers be? They claim a Christian faith but revere Ayn Rand, a misogynistic, declared atheist whose only good point was her ability to write.

I have pondered on this quite a deal. I have done some ranting as well, but the conclusion I have come to is this. If we allow certain groups, such as the Tea Party, the Far Right Republicans and ALEC to control our government, buy out our supreme court, use racism, fundamentalist Christianity and hate to force their way into power, we can say hello again to maternity homes, forced surrenders and social engineering. All the progress made in the areas of women's rights and health will go down the drain, there will be thriving back-alley abortion operations and birth control will be tightly controlled by the powers that might be.

Education is suffering and the Dumbing Down Of America is almost a fait accompli. What else can one think when MSNBC gives an hour or more to the wedding of some bimbo reality star? How else does one explain such TV hits as Parking Wars and Storage Wars? Why are science and nature programs no longer on mainstream networks? Why are PBS and NPR having constant beg-athons?

As Wall Street and CEOs play fast and loose with our livelihoods, America, the land of the free is going down the toilet and into history along with Rome, The Old British Empire and all the others that fell of their own weight and greed. I believe it will not be an alien invasion, global warming (REAL, by the way), an asteroid collision or a nuclear attack but a rotting from within that will bring us down. It may take another civil war to save us only this time the lines will be drawn in ideology, not northern and southern boundaries.

We have presidential candidates that are totally ignorant about history and the meaning of the Constitution. They want to take it away and substitute the Bible and to Hell with the First Amendment. We who want justice and redress don't stand the chance of a snowball in July if these dogmatic dumb asses manage to win the nomination and election. Single motherhood will go back from being a choice to being a sin. A Corporate Theocracy isn't just science fiction material but a real and present threat.

It took me taking a step back from all things surrender and adoption and looking at the big picture. And my tree was part of the forest. I am 66 and while not exactly ancient, I know that I am not going to be around for the big show that may or may not happen. All I can do is try to work to save the forest so that we can still breathe and then work on my tree. It will probably be those coming after me who will see the results, unless the corporate takeover is complete. We did not see our sons, fathers, daughters, sisters, brothers and friends die in foreign wars to allow this to happen.

My son and I are discussing a trip to DC so that we can participate in the "Take Back The Dream" rally. I am signing petitions, writing letters to congress, the senate, our President and newspaper editors. I am supporting those who want to hold the line against a takeover of our government by the corporations and fundies. Living in a theocracy is no fun. Ask people in Iran, if you happen to be in a place where they can answer you honestly.

I am feeling the earth move as the shades of Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams (the elder...not the little boy), Paul Revere and all the rest rail in anger at the blatant rewriting and skewing of history. Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt (boy, do we need another 'trust-buster' like him), FDR and JFK are probably in tears, if there is an existence after death. Or maybe the railing and the crying are just me acting for them. This is certainly a piss-poor way to honor their memories by taking what they worked so diligently to create and making it unrecognizable and serving only the financially and theologically "elite."

In any event, before we take the trip to redress, justice and reform, we need to make sure the vehicle is in running condition. I shall keep a close eye on my tree, but I need to get the nasties out of the forest. Anyone want to help?

Beating A Dead Horse Can Be Good

2011-08-18T08:18:00.010-02:00

You say either and I say eye-ther
You say neither and I say nie-ther
Either, eye-ther, neither, nie-ther
Let's call the whole thing off

You say tomato, I say tomahto
You eat potato and I eat potahto
Tomato, tomahto, potato, potahto
Let's call the whole thing off

But oh, if we call the whole thing off then we must part
And oh, if we ever part then that might break my heart

So, if you wear pajamas and I wear pajahmas
I'll wear pajamas and give up pajahmas
For we know we need eachother so we
Better call the calling off, off
Oh, let's call the whole thing off

You say ahfter and I say after
You say lauhghter and I say laughter
After, ahfter, laughter, lauhghter
Let's call the whole thing off

You say Havana and I say Havahna
You eat banana and I eat banahna
Havana, Havahna, banana, banahna
Let's call the whole thing off

But oh, if we call the whole thing off then we must part
And oh, if we ever part then that might break my heart

So, if you say oysters and I say ersters
I'll eat oysters and give up ersters
For we know we need each other so we
Better call the calling off, off
Oh, let's call the whole thing off

The battle of the "B" word has erupted again, on a Facebook group. It began, as far as I can tell, having entered the fray a bit late, by an adopted adult who was really angry at her mother and carried on by a mother or two who felt themselves to be the righteous voices of reason. It was impelled forward by hostility and a lack of understanding.

Now, if it were just a matter of pronunciation, as in this cute ditty, above, that Fred warbled to Ginger, I think it would be relatively unimportant. But, in this case, it IS important. I can refer many people to the article by Diane Turski, "Why Birthmother Means Breeder," or I could speak about the fight of African Americans to be referred to in a dignified manner, but there are always, it seems, those who want to push us back into our dusty niches.

Yes, to all. LANGUAGE IS IMPORTANT. Can you hear me? This is an issue brought about by the civil and human rights of the mothers being decimated, especially during the BSE. We were defined, then, as being deviant, delinquent, careless young sluts. Most of us were just frightened girls who loved, maybe not wisely, but too well. We were judged and found lacking by the evidence of our humanity and passion.

The author and serial adopter, Pearl Buck, first used the term "birth mother" in the 1950's. The early founders of Concerned United Birthparents left out the space in the middle of birth and mother and thought they had settled the issue. What happened, however, is that the industry and society took off with the term and the meaning became one that is anything but dignified and respect-worthy. It is used against us to reduce us as mothers and women. It is used to pre-define a surrendering mother before she even thinks about surrender. It is a tool and a ploy of the industry and social engineers. It is a way for those who adopt to deny our motherhood as many would like to deny our very existence.

It's funny that they also apply the word to unwed fathers. A man can't be a "birth" father because he didn't give birth. Ergo, as one mother pointed out, wouldn't that make the males in the equation "Ejaculationfathers?" It is, and always will be, a term of denigration. There is no way you can take the term, as the adoptees were able to do with "Bastard," and make it one of "in-your-face self-respect." Perhaps, if we were to call ourselves "Sluts," that would have more of a ring? No, not really. A bastard is not responsible for the circumstances of their birth. We were forced and coerced and we need a sobriquet that recognizes that fact and the fact that we require respect. "Slut" just plays into the stereotype.

If Gandhi, Martin Luther King and many others realized the importance of how language is used, why is it such a battle for Natural Mothers to insist on being referred to in a dignified and respectful way? We are only trying to claim that which was ours before we were stripped of all autonomy and thrust into a cycle of grief and shame. Shame is not acceptable any more. Self-respect is essential to anyone making a mark in the battle for inquiry and redress and reform.

So save your, "it doesn't matter" speeches for to-may-to/to-mah-to. I am not a walking uterus, a breeder for the infertile or a non-mother. I am a Mother, or, if you insist on differentiation, a Natural Mother.

You can call me a birthmother all you like. But I will not answer you.

And The Beat Goes On..

2011-07-18T10:25:00.007-02:00

Look above this post at the blog header. It says, in PLAIN ENGLISH, "My home. My blog. My opinions. This is NOT a forum for debate." What's not to understand? I just had to hit on this once again as I seem to get more and more attention each time I do. *whistles and giggles*

My message and opinions are not exactly PC as far as adoption is concerned, but they are the true and valid experiences and opinions of legions of mothers and adoptees who have had to deal with the painfully unnatural nature of the separation and the expectations put upon our children.

This is the nice thing about the right to Freedom of Speech. As long as I don't post porn, violent sedition or libel, I can say whatever I like as the owner of this website (as defined by Google). I could have made Motherhood Deleted a subscription-only site, but I am not doing any good preaching to the choir. We want to reach the general public and people with open minds. This blog is to educate, not debate. Debate, as far as I, personally, am concerned, wastes my precious time and space. Usually, it turns into attacks and the sort of people who want to debate are not going to have their minds changed by any argument I might give. It is my right to monitor comments and delete any that I find argumentative and non-productive or (as in the case of one or two) deceptively "curious."

But, lest any of you frustrated flamers think you are not being heard, fear not! For, on my Face Book page, I copy and paste, for all my friends to see, your words of censure and your banal insults. We have many a laugh over them. The personal attacks are the best, especially for those who really know me. I still have to chuckle about the one that accused me of driving a Buick with a Palin for Prez bumper sticker on it, especially since I drive a PT cruiser and am a die-hard, left-leaning Democrat. That one will make me laugh for a long time. Her snap judgement of a complete stranger is totally comical.

Then there is the confused person who says that, since I allow the contents of my blog to be read by the general public, I should provide a forum for those who....well, "disagree" would be the polite term. That a public website is not the same as my home. Well, uh...read above.

So I am going to say it again, LOUDER. THIS IS MY BLOG. HERE, IT IS SAFE FOR ME TO POST MY OPINIONS AND OBSERVATIONS IN THE SPIRIT OF FREE SPEECH. IF YOU DON'T AGREE WITH ME, GET YOUR OWN BLOG AND POST YOUR OPINIONS AND OBSERVATIONS. But do watch out for that "libel" thing.

You know, a lot of flamers have a habit of citing the rare "hard case" when justifying adoption. The fact is that children with AIDS were not an issue during the BSE and the crack whore mother was also a very rare bird. She and the afflicted, orphaned children still are not the norm. I have to thank my friend, Bastardette for pointing this fact out to me.

And, there are numerous kin who DO want to take on the children of family members who can't care for them, but the state and others think that it is more profitable to subsidize an adoption that to help out with expenses for real family. This is the kind of social engineering that wants to deny the poor the right to have families and raise children. I'm still a fan of the idea of beefing up the legal guardian descriptions so that the lie of "as if born to" becomes unnecessary and children receive love and nurture without the pressure of trying to be what they are not.

But to hear it from the ones salivating over the prospect of getting a baby, toddler or being a saint and "saving" an older child, the mothers are worthless and the families of the mother and father are uncaring 100% of the time. NOT TRUE. Cases such as that are still in the minority, PAPs still lust after that healthy, preferably female infant, and there is money to be made and hearts to break.

There are also lives to forever mark with the stain and strain of the attempt to break the natural bond. No, it doesn't break, but it bends and twists out of shape over the years and grief and confusion are among the least of the worries of the Mother and Adopted Adult. Those who have not walked in our shoes and who operate from the vantage point of the one who benefits from that separation should not judge when we speak out...they will but they shouldn't.

So flamers, keep them coming. We get a really good laugh after we tear your arguments to shreds. The personal attacks are really special. I don't go to the happy-sappy, pro-adoption blogs and attack or argue. Those people are saying what they have the right to say, whether I agree or not. And I sure don't judge the character of people I don't know, personally.

I am very lucky when it comes to family and friends. I guess that is why I am able to keep on posting even when being attacked by strangers and nutbars. I feel the love and support and it keeps me keeping on.

And about the one who accused me of having a "heart of coal," my husband has an owl carved from coal that we bought in our future retirement home, West Virginia. Does that count? And you know what happens to coal under a lot of pressure?

It turns into diamonds.

Bless Their Hearts

2011-07-17T11:40:00.004-02:00

If you have ever lived in any part of the South for any amount of time, then you know that the women of the South have a way of softening the harshest criticisms by adding one little phrase:"Bless his/her heart." It's all part of that manners thing. Yes, I said that southerners are polite. I didn't say they weren't human. Gossip is as prevalent in the South as anywhere else.

I remember being at church one Easter morning when I was about twelve and overhearing what I refer to as the "Biddy Brigade" critiquing the clothes and hats that other women were wearing. One spoke up and said, "You know, I think Malvena is color-blind, bless her heart." Malvena (not her real name but close) was resplendent in day-glow, hot pink. Her cheeks were pink, her lipstick was pink...even her shoes, bag, corsage and eyeshadow were pink. I sang in the choir and all eyes in the loft were constantly drawn to that eye-blinding spot of pink in the congregation. I know she thought the looks she received were admiring and I had to give her an A for having Chutzpah (chooots-pah?) enough to wear what she liked.

These days, people are prone to just put out those zingers without adding the softener at the end. But I have a lot of hearts I want to bless. For instance:

The adoption industry seems to smugly believe that we Mothers are no threat to them, Bless their Hearts.

That PAP bashed me online because she is still insecure about adopting, Bless her Heart.

My child's adopter went into a nasty tailspin when my child found me, Bless her Heart.

Those folks seem to think they are more entitled to our children than we are, Bless their Hearts.

Everyone connected with adoption seems to think that we mothers should take a back seat and suffer. How silly, Bless their Hearts.

Gee! We are still treated like teenage delinquents and our adult children are still treated like infants. These people are seriously deluded, Bless their Hearts.

Michelle Bachmann is bat guano crazy, Bless her Heart. (Sorry...had to throw that one in)

So, you see that any allusion to or critique of delusional, greedy, arrogant and rapacious behavior, such as that which abounds in the world of surrender coercion, the Industry of Adoption, and the rabid market for babies can get the Steel Magnolia treatment by just adding a "Bless his/her/their Heart(s)" with a sympathetic smile, to the end.

Then you look at your friend, grin really big, and wink.

Welcome To My Home

2011-07-16T19:01:00.003-02:00

And that's what this is, you know. My blog, my Face Book page are my territories. When someone posts comments on either it is the same as someone coming into my house and talking. No one with any real breeding and sense of decency would ever go into anyone's home, especially the home of someone they don't know, and forcefully and even viciously challenge the home owner's beliefs, values and standards and opinions.

Now I was raised in the south for most of my growing up years, and lived in SC until 1996. Well bred, intelligent southerners put a lot of stock in good manners. It was a shock for me to learn that others didn't see civility and respect as we did...something important. And on the Internet?? The anonymity of the 'net seems to let people think they can say whatever they want to whomever they please, stir up any kind of trouble they can and get away with it.

This is why I have monitored comments. I have no desire to see MY blog, expressing MY opinions and MY beliefs being turned into a forum for flame wars. I have no need, here in my home, to be "fair and balanced" nor am I open to those who wish to change my attitude about adoption with near evangelical zeal. If I won't let Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses into my home, why should I let your argumentative, pro-adoption posts be published on my blog?

There are some who have the opinion that it is good to have debate and they do allow it, to an extent, on their blogs. Good for them. To each their own. But this is my soap box. This is not subjective journalism, here, but objective editorializing.

Recently, I have been sandbagged by a number of posters, most of them anonymous, who pop up every now and then and try to get my goat. Well, Nanny's in the back yard, cropping grass, waiting to be milked and you can't have her.

The insults that follow comments being deleted are hysterically funny in many cases. You can tell that these pro-A's taking umbrage at my opinions don't know me at all. One accused me of having a Sarah Palin bumper sticker. I laughed so hard I started coughing. Anonymous, Honey, I am so left-winged and so anti-Tea Party and Faux News and the GOP that my husband, a moderate, never discusses politics with me. I read that to him and we chortled most of the afternoon.

So, to make it clear, Motherhood Deleted is my house and I don't allow my beliefs and values and standards to be challenged in my house. You want to air another side of the issue? Write your own blog and leave mine alone. I don't frequent the blogs of pro-adoptionists and so you won't have to worry about me doing the hit and run, anonymous thing.

If you want a fight, go to Craigslist and their adoption section. Someone is always raking someone else over the coals over there.

Oh, and don't think we aren't being taken seriously, us Mothers from the BSE. We are.

And There's Another One!!

2011-07-13T18:42:00.004-02:00

Just when I find myself in the delighted position of not having to decline comments for a long time, along comes another PAP (or so she says) with her, "just curious" questions about my views on adoption. Here's her seemingly innocuous comment:

"Hi there-
I just stumbled across your blog, and I must say that I am intrigued. I am a soon-to-be adoptive parent and while I don’t expect rainbows and puppy dogs, I am excited. I was wondering if you think that adoption is ever a good thing? In a perfect world, I don’t believe adoption would ever be necessary. But since we live in an imperfect world, do you believe that there are any situations where adoption can be the best option (given the circumstances) for all parties involved? Interested to hear your thoughts."

Whatever would adopters, the industry and PAPs do without that good, old, imperfect world (crack-whore moms and undeserving, single teens) to justify them doing what they really feel, inside, they have a perfect right to do? Sorry, but I don't buy it, especially if said PAP is lusting after a womb-fresh infant or toddler. There they are, just like saints, waiting to take in the, seemingly, "unwanted." How convenient.

To the commenter: You don't really want to hear my thoughts. You want to try to argue me down or see what king of opposition there is out here in the real world. Often, agencies, church-affiliated, especially, will assume an identity and try to stir the pot among those of us who don't like adoption, especially as it was practiced in the last century. Unfortunately, we are learning from heart-broken moms, that coercion has just put on some pretty lace, powdered its face, spritzed on some Rainbow Farte parfum and still going at it. The ads are slick and the tactics are slicker.

Yes, I do think that there are some women who truly don't want their babies and I encourage them to seek out a first-trimester termination. Better yet, avail yourself of available and effective birth control and seek termination if that fails. Why reduce yourself to serving as a brood mare for someone who sees themselves as more deserving and subject a child to emotional pain? If you feel you must carry to term, then see about finding a way for that child to remain in his/her family of origin. There has to be a daddy somewhere, no?

I talk to a lot of adopted people every day. One thing I have learned is that the hardest thing for anyone to accept is the thought that their mother did not want them, that said mother saw them as disposable. That idea does a good service for the adopters and the facilitators, even if it often slanders innocent Mothers who were coerced. From what I have seen, Mr. and Mrs. PAP, the most loving, most nurturing adopters in the worlds cannot take the sting out of that abandonment issue. All the love in the world cannot heal that wound and "attachment therapy" is a ridiculous concept.

And as for reunion, there is no reunion that can make up for the years lost, the bond twisted and the misconceptions that grew and grew. It is a minefield born of the most unnatural separation there is. Even after 18 years, I find myself still walking on eggshells occasionally and suffering through periodic breaches in the relationships. I was not put on this earth to provide an infant for C. and C. S. or for K. and S. S. !! There is no "meant to be" or "God's Will" about it...just injustice, a sick, punitive society and the greed that marks us as nothing more than a garden plot from which a product can be reaped.

My children were conceived and gestated in MY body. It was MY job to raise them and care for them. I suffered and they suffered because I was not allowed to do my job. Don't expect any friendly words about adoption from me.

There. Those are my thoughts. Accept or reject them, but don't expect to change my mind or my message.

Adoption separation sucks.

A Little Less Talk.......

2011-07-12T12:15:00.007-02:00

....and a lot more action. I have been suffering from a writer's block, especially in this subject area where so much has been written. As time has gone by, I have noticed that I am often repeating myself. Of course, that happens with a lot of causes. And some things do bear repeating.

The latest political unrest and national and international crisis have distracted me. As a senior citizen, largely reliant on Social Security and Medicare, I am afraid of what I see happening in the halls of congress and in the White House. As a die-hard liberal, I am frustrated.

But, first and foremost, is my interest in seeing justice done for the Mothers of the EMS and our adult children. We can't change the past, but we can address the injustices and damage done and demand that something be done in the way of redress and civil/human rights.

It's a simple request from our adult children. Give them access to their Original Birth Certificates in a simple and straightforward bill with no embroidery and contact vetoes and "on-demand" medical histories from their Mothers. It shouldn't take 80+ pages to give our children the right to information they should have had all along. Then let the ADULTS involved take it from there.

It's not quite so simple in the case of the Mothers' issues. But, if they can complicate something as simple as OBC access for adoptees, think of what they could do with our plight. I do know that we are sick and tired of the Industry, adopters and others who don't know us presuming to speak for us. We are big girls now. If we want to say "no" we can do it on our own without the help of the ACLU, NCFA or the EBDI. That is, of course, if we want to. The vast majority of us DO NOT want our names kept from our adult children. The states and bill writers are big-brothering us to death with this one.

Well, come August 8, I will have my opportunity to put my physical presence where my mouth has been, lo, these many years. I am braving the heat of the big city of San Antonio, Texas to add my voice to those seeking the cooperation of state reps. The National Convention of State Legislators will be meeting there and adoptees and mothers will be there. We shall see what we shall see because a couple of us will also be representing SMAAC and the Mothers' issues. We have been working on a brochure for our cause and hope to see it in the hands of someone who might actually learn something from it

We will be there with adoptees, demonstrating and, hopefully, educating. This is not an easy task. We are bucking a status quo with which our entire society has been not only comfortable, but enamoured. Adoption mythology in the US is right up there with the flag, baseball, apple pie and fireworks on the Fourth. It is another of those feel-good myths that people would rather believe than see the dark underbelly. It is presented to the public by the Industry, and those that profit in any way from it, in the same skewed way that we have taught American History to our children..totally slanted and prettied up with the dirt swept under the rug. Getting the word out about the realities involved is going to be an uphill climb.

So, San Antonio, don't get me wrong. I know you have that lovely RiverWalk and that little, historical, adobe mission, but you could never get me to come there in August for those attractions. Triple-digit heat is not my thing. But the cluster-f*** of sealed records, the inequities of coerced surrenders and the grief of Mothers and the civil and human rights of us and our adult children can and will get me out there in the heat. And I'm mean when I'm hot.

Watch out, you State Legislators...the adoptees are coming and they are bringing their Mamas!

When The Myth Explodes

2011-06-23T12:09:00.005-02:00

I received, this morning, a very interesting and poignant comment on my old post, "What Anti-Adoption Means," posted 9/09/2009. It was from a woman, here in Florida, who adopted a sibling group and has learned, the hard way, about the mythology of adoption. She was terribly disappointed when her vision of family was disrupted by the truth. She wrote:

"You know what? I totally agree with you, and I am the adoptive mother of 5 children (a sibling group) The two older ones are now adults, and the day they turned 18 they left us, found their birthmom on Facebook, and have never loooked back. We were lied to by the state of Florida, told the kids had no other options, that we were the last chance. In reality, it turns out we were the "last chance" the state had to pawn the kids off on someone that didn't need a subsidy or financial help. There were relatives willing to take the kids, but they were poor, so the state of Florida found it cheaper to give them to us, than to their own family members. Now I have to deal every day with the heartache of having raised the two older ones only to have them leave me for their biological family. I live in constant fear that the same thing will happen with my 3 little ones that are still with me. I DO NOT BLAME THE CHILDREN! Adoption is a horrible lie, it not only hurts the children, it hurts the adoptive parents."

I answered:

"Erin, you left someone out...someone that most adopters don't want to even consider. In the MAJORITY of cases, the natural mother suffers unrelenting grief and pain. MOST of us, especially from the BSE/EMS era, were not given a choice. Today, many SW's and agencies are coercive or, as you point out, don't consider the natural family if they can find people with more money. That is government-sponsored social engineering.

Rather than "living in fear," why don't you try being honest with the three you have now? Acknowledge their need to know, their primal grief and help them connect with their natural families. There is always more than enough love to go around.

You can't buy or assume motherhood regardless of what that piece of paper says. But you can earn your children's love and respect by realizing that they are not possessions but their own people. You can also realize that "as if born to" is only legal-speak and not a reality. You will always know that your children were born to other women.

You might also want to ask yourself why your older kids "never looked back." Did you place emotional demands and conditions on them about their relationship with their natural families? You have a chance to do things differently with the young ones. Face your issues and work with your old mistakes. Good Luck."

I can't help but be amazed that this woman sees herself as more of a victim than the natural family. These children were placed by the state for all the wrong reasons and now this woman is having to deal with the fact that the blood bond is stronger than adopters wants to think it is. I assume this was a foster situation in the beginning and those oldest children probably had complete memories of their natural family. The fact that they have a natural family that wanted them but were denied custody, primarily because the state of Florida is big on the social-engineering thing, had to have been a major factor in the "defection" of the two oldest.

But I would love it if just one adopter could be educated to the realities of adoption rather than the ephemeral promises made by the adoption mythology. There is the assumption of ownership of the child. Natural parents don't usually see it this way. We see it as our job to give the child love and nurture and prepare them to face life on their own terms. We don't own them in any way. They belong to themselves and they form other bonds where their primary loyalty is to a partner/spouse rather than to us. Letting go is part of love. And loving them, regardless of the choices they make is part of being a parent.

Adoption is the only arrangement where a person is never allowed to legally grow up, where the existence of a natural mother and natural family is literally ignored (and some wish would disappear) and where a fantasy is legally entered on the books via "as if born to" decrees and amended birth certificates.

No, don't blame the "children" (including the adult ones) and don't blame the natural family, either. Poverty is not a good reason to break up a family or take children from a mother. Have some compassion for those children in a situation that was not of their choosing and without their own kith and kin near to them. Have compassion for the mother that lost her children, many times through no fault of her own, and the family that lost their kin because they were poor and needed assistance. The adopter's disappointment, I opine, pales beside the grief of the coerced mother who has a child or children taken for adoption and the pain and frustration of the adoptee.

I was told by a woman who adopted during the BSE that I was a representative of her "worst nightmare." No matter how much adopters would like to ignore the natural parents and family (and how large those people loom in the minds and emotions of the children they adopt) they know we are out there. They know enough to, if they are smart, enable them to take a realistic look at adoption and learn to share and care.

There's that old thing about Butterflies and how you have to let go...I wonder if the reason these adoptees "never looked back" comes from being held too tightly? I wonder if holding on too tightly happens because we also loom large in the back of the mind of the adopter. Everyone tries to make a monster of the mother/natural family.

But we are all just ordinary people who either got caught up in extraordinary circumstances, got swept into the web of the state or agencies, or fell for a myth and acted out of panic. We are families who are sad when one of own becomes a prisoner of their bad choices and we want to take care of the children of our own but are not allowed to if the state gets there first. Nope, no monsters here.

Perhaps the expectations of those who adopt should be scrutinized. It doesn't help that the Industry, including the state, pander to those wants and expectations. The court presumes to do something that only nature can accomplish with that "as if born to" nonsense. That is the arrogance of humanity and social engineering.

And that myth can often blow up, right in their astonished faces.

All About Dad

2011-06-18T11:29:00.004-02:00

Father's Day isn't the best day in the world for me. My own father, now deceased, was not exactly the picture of the ideal Dad. Father definitely did NOT know best in our home.

I was abandoned and lied about by the father of my oldest child and raped and abandoned by the father of my second. The first was poor judgement on my part in loving someone too immature to hold up his end of the relationship. The second was just being in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong person.

While our marriage wasn't the best, my ex-husband was and is an excellent father to our two. My current husband is a wonderful step-father and was a very loving Dad to the only child he had of his own, now deceased. Father's day is rough for him.

My own father was a narcissistic, pathological liar, bigamist and serial adulterer. The last few years of his life were, unfortunately, the best for us. He had retreated into a fantasy of being a good man who never hurt anyone and slowly ate himself to death. He died of congestive heart failure complicated by extreme Type II diabetes at age 72.

For nine years, from age five to age fourteen, I wondered about him and why he left. When he came back, I would soon come to believe it would have been better had he stayed gone. My mother and extended family were my sanity and comfort...well, at least until I "went and got MYSELF pregnant."

I have seen many adoptees becoming the champions of the natural fathers, but they weren't the ones who were in the relationships with these guys that led to their conception. For every girl who "got pregnant, deliberately, to trap a man," I can show you ten who just loved a guy too much to realize that he was not going to hang in for the duration. For every girl who "didn't tell the father because she was mad at him," I can show you twenty who, when they told their beloved the news, were coughing from the dust of his hasty departure. There are two sides to every story and Mom is NOT always the villain.

To me, the kind of father that deserves the accolades on Father's Day are the ones who took the responsibility for their actions and stood fast to give their child a name and the ability to stay within the family of origin. I would have been OK with a quickie marriage and divorce, even with that odious animal who inseminated me against my will, for the ability to keep my child. That's what it was all about, back then. No husband, no Mrs. in front of your name, no right to your own child. Illogical but then this society has never been real good with that logic thing, in my opinion.

I think the two hardest pills to swallow were learning the true nature of my own father, and being abandoned by the father of my first born and mistreated by him. I truly loved both these guys, the first with the innocent love of a child and the second with the first intense love of a young woman, and they both gave me a major kick in the gut. You know what's funny? My first love couldn't stand my father. I think he saw himself in my old man's philandering ways.

So excuse me if all I do for Father's Day is give my husband the loving support he needs and thank my ex-husband for being a good Dad. The rest is up to everyone else to do as they see fit. I don't think I feel much like celebrating.

Rights: Deleted

2011-06-17T10:35:00.006-02:00

I get so frustrated with the National Organization for Women (NOW) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and even Planned Parenthood (PP). All are supposedly committed to the protection of an oppressed gender, including reproductive rights and the upholding of the rights of the minorities. And they are producing major suckage at both.

NOW is top-heavy with adopters and they won't even consider the violation of the reproductive rights of the BSE/EMS mother as a valid issue. The ACLU is so intent on covering the hides of some mysterious beemommies hiding under rocks, somewhere, that they are campaigning against the rights of another minority, the BSE adoptee whose records and identity are closed to them. What is wrong with this picture?

This is all so ass-backwards that I have to wonder what they have been smoking. You would think that millions of young women, coerced into the loss of their infants would definitely be a woman's issue. Mais Non! NOW and PP is protecting the "rights" of young women to "choose adoption." Is that on a "whether we really want to or not, fully-uninformed" basis, PP and NOW?

There is an entire industry that is laughing at these people all the way to the bank. "Hey Fat!" "What is it, Cat?" "These breeders can't even get their own gender to take up for them! Har Har Har!" Yuck it up, boys. We're still here and still talking.

As for the ACLU, they are NOT protecting me from anything. What about the rights of adoptees to know their true beginnings, to be able to get a passport and other documents that most of us can get with no problem? What about the rights of a group of people that this entire, benighted nation treats like eternal children? They are too busy protecting a tiny group of cowards who have the right to say "no." I wonder if that is because there are so many attorneys in the ACLU?

Or are they really protecting anyone? How far into these organizations has the Industry been able to reach? Who is greasing whose palms? What ancient book of social psychology are they being fed as the ultimate word on the subject? And why, why don't they ask us? Mothers and adoptees are definitely more qualified to speak to what is needed than a bunch of lawyers and adopters. OUR experience is important too.

Justice NEEDS to take a look. We refuse to remain forever non-mothers and our children refuse to remain forever infants. It is almost a hoot that the very groups that are supposed to see to our rights are among the most active in attempting to deny them. It's sort of like the idealistic social worker of the mid-20th century who thought they were doing something noble when they "created families" by destroying one. This nation has taken so many wrong turns in the past century that we are running in circles.

Mothers and adopted adults are so sick of the curb, the underside of the bus, the well of secrets and the "who cares?" attitude toward our issues of our governing bodies. I, for one, am tired of dirty bills, riders, 60+ page proposed legislations that give to some and not to others and others trying to speak for us who have no right to do so....do you hear that, Mr. Pertman, Mr. Johnson (or "Chuckie" as we like to call him) ? Who decided that we did not have the ability to speak for ourselves? Do you, like many adopters and facilitators, still persist in seeing the Natural Mother as unwashed, semi-literate trash and our children as still in diapers? Guess again, fella!

Until the powers-that-be stop listening to self-appointed "experts" with special interests in keeping the Industry going and start listening to the real experts who have lived this unique cluster f*** of secrets, lies, grief and loss, I fear we are going to keep moving at a snail's pace. Not cool..not cool at all.

Warning...many of us have dealt with our issues and all that is left behind is the righteous indignation of the injustice done. I invite Lady Justice to take a peek.

From The Horses' Mouths

2011-06-16T11:10:00.005-02:00

It takes a lot to make me jump in the air and click my callused heels, but Bastardette's blog from yesterday about the the things many adopters say and think, "Busted: Adoptive Parents Speak," definitely had me catching some air time. I say many adopters, but my personal experiences with those who adopt has ME saying MOST adopters. I read this one and let out with a loud "YES" which had one of my dogs barking, wondering where the intruder was.

Another mother and I were talking and we noted that people we knew before they decided to adopt were very different after that. They went through some kind of obsessive metamorphosis that didn't do a whole lot for their fairness and compassion factors. I know of one, whom I once thought of as the soul of tolerance, who began to utter disparaging remarks about "slutty, teenage whores." If she thought so little of the mother, why would she want that girl's child? And if the adopted child hears his/her natural mother spoken of in that way, how must it make that child feel about him/herself?

Here is one such quote from a blog entitled, 'Adoptive Parents Speak,' from which Bastardette culled the best bits for her excellent post.

"Holy Crap

The adoption option–

The baby’s mother– An immature irresponsible young women most likely from a Jerry Springer Show type of family. She will be extremly emotionally attached to her baby and is too immature to fully understand and cope with the boundaries of an open adoption relationship. Infant adoption is a catch 22. Mothers of good genetic stock aren’t screwed up enough to give thier newborn babies away to strangers…..If a mother is unfit enough to give away her baby she is unfortunatly not only unfit enough to parent but is also unfit where she shouldn’t be breeding and spreading her inferior genes. She is most likely a failure in school with a low IQ. I have read on adoption forums that if an adoptive couple checks off that they don’t want a baby from a birthmother who has smoked during her pregnancy that they will be on the waiting list for a long time….Birthmothers tend to come from families with drug abuse and alcholism. I have seen birthmother blogs and I have never seen an attractive birthmother. Most of them look like the trailer park white trash that they are. Ugly squirrely faces, buck teeth, obese etc. Birthmothers are deadbeat moms. Why would adoptive parents pay 30 grand for some loser’s baby? (spelling left intact)"

This one was among the more offensive that I read and I have to thank Bastardette for the post and the link. The Industry and the adopters themselves have created a monster of a person with little thought for anyone but themselves and an avarice that allows them to discount the humanity and dignity of the mother of the child they covet. They are intent on keeping the stigma of the "slutty, unwed mother" alive and treat the children they so avidly desire as horses at a livestock sale. Let's see...check hoofs, teeth, back and whithers...OK, this one'll do, pardner.

Perhaps the only way they can live with themselves is to dehumanize both the product and the producer. Their derisive attitude towards the mother is tinged with the envy they must feel for her fertility. Sorry, but this is 2011 and no one can tell me that all these wannabe mommies went to their marriage bed with hymen intact. I have to ask, since along with delayed childbirth, STDs are the foremost common causes of infertility, just what right any of these women have to judge the mothers whose babies they covet so fiercely? What if everyone started saying that adopters do so because they spread their legs and got a case of the clap? That kind of stereotype is what is laid on Natural Mothers to this, supposedly, enlightened day.

We mothers, mostly in private support groups, have been sharing our experiences and disappointments with the people who adopted our children for years. We can't express that to our adult children because they are, for the most part, very defensive of their adopters and that's understandable. But when we reunite with a seriously damaged individual whose ideas about motherhood, family, and relationships is badly skewed, and whose personal life is in shambles, it is hard not to be angry at both the adopters and those social workers who promised us the moon, adopter-wise. Ward and June were unavailable so our kids got whatever was behind door number 2.

We Natural Mothers from the BSE/EMS were, for the most part, coerced into surrendering our parental rights and responsibilities. But NO ONE could make us surrender our motherhood, our right to eventually know our child and our concern and caring for that child. And that scares the fetid feces out of the adopters. Deep down, they know this. They know we are torn and grieving.

So they attack our morals, our values, our worth as human beings as a way to justify their greed. They find the few who fit their description and label the majority by the picture of that tiny minority. I still wonder why that woman quoted above would want the child of the women she describes. It boggles the logical mind.

I hope that every woman with an unplanned pregnancy that is considering surrender will read that blog. They need to know into what kind of environment they are sending their innocent babies. I hope that informative blog stays up and adopters and PAPs keep adding their venom and arrogance to it.

Then if anyone wonders where the potential beemommy got the idea to change her mind about surrender, we can say, "she got her information from the horses' mouths!"

Wheel's Turnin' Round and Round

2011-06-13T09:39:00.005-02:00

Have you ever crawled into bed at night, so tired and sleepy that you can't wait to hit the pillow only to lie there, wide awake, while your brain goes into overdrive? I had one of those nights not too long ago. It seems that the more I tried to stifle the inept problem-solver between my ears, the harder the wheels turn.

It's not an uncommon phenomenon. My hubby is the world's worst at being unable to sleep in. Once he wakes up, no matter how early, his active brain won't let him go back to sleep. That is why I find him asleep in his recliner so often. All those thing he felt MUST be done, that wouldn't let him stay in bed, don't get done. It's a vicious cycle.

But I digress. I started thinking of all the things that I had discovered about surrender, society, adoption, reunion, closed records and the memories of my time in the Unwed Mother Hot Seat. I started playing "what if" and imagining what I would have done differently and how. I flashed back to April 30, 1993 and my first reunion (I had two that year...WHEW!) and what I might have done and said had I known then what I know now.

I remember that contentious phone conversation with the woman who adopted my daughter and I went through a litany of other things I might have said. When she told me to "cease" the "nonsense" of reunion, I just replied that I was leaving that up to my daughter. I came up with quite a few much better responses 18 years too late.

One of them was a keeper, though. It was a point we Mothers have discussed among ourselves on many occasions. Say it takes 18 to 22 years to raise a child to productive adulthood. Once our children have reached that point, they become responsible, in every way, if we did a decent job, for themselves. But, even though my daughter was in her 30's at the time of reunion, divorced with two children she was raising, the woman who adopted her still seemed to think of her as a possession...an eternal child. I wish I had said, "She belongs to neither of us. She is her own person, an adult. We have no control over what she needs, wants or does. Live with it!"

If we do our jobs well, and forge bonds of love with the children we raise, then there will be a relationship after they have left the nest. But their decisions, their relationships and their lives are their own. No one "owns" them but themselves. It is a natural part of life that children grow and go, form partnerships and start their own cycle. It is natural but it seems that, in adoption, there is an "eternal child" clause. Someone once likened it to slavery and it does have its likenesses.

There are many Mothers who have had an adopter tell her that she was their worst nightmare. That is the insecurity that goes with adopting. The one thing that the courts of this land cannot create with their almighty decrees, contracts, agreements and judicial signatures is that blood bond. That has to be what the adopters can't face. The fear of losing the child they raised to the Mother who bore that child tends to interfere with a fully healthy relationship. If they have done their job well, then that shouldn't be a problem. And it wasn't for my daughter. Her love for those she calls her parents never wavered. But their fear still invaded what could have been a wonderful reunion.

I understand the fear, but I don't condone holding an adult hostage to it. My daughter was threatened with having herself and her children cut out of the will. What should have been parental love became conditional. I felt sad for all of us. While I respect my daughter's feeling where the people who raised her are concerned, I found that I had little feeling for them one way or the other once I worked through the anger. It wasn't about them...reunion was about US.

All that should be a moot point by now, since both of them passed away within a couple of years of each other a few years back. I have neither resentment nor any other feelings for them. They were not and are not a part of my life.

Yet, in my daughter's life, their ghosts loom large. Though several years have passed, she can tell you the exact date of their death without having to refer to any paperwork. She still mourns and I wonder if it is them or the idea of the dream of the "ideal" life and family she had that she mourns.

My mother passed away 43 years ago. The only reason that I can remember the date is because she died at Christmas. I can't tell you the date of my father's death. I remember them on Mother's Day and Father's Day and sometimes will have a memory that makes me smile. I miss them but know that this is the cycle of life. I do NOT post paeans of praise and love to them on the anniversary of their deaths, nor have I held my grief to me like Linus held his blanket. Grief is a process with a beginning and an end and reaching acceptance and peace is the goal.

That's when I realized what was keeping me awake. I was trying to free my daughter with my mind. No can do! The only one who can release her into a full and happy life is HER. I can toss, turn, suggest, obsess and you name it and it won't do a lick of good. I needed to let go and let IT go. "What if" is a dangerous game to play when you need sleep.

I finally nodded off and slept late the next morning...if you call 8:00 AM, sleeping late. The problem was solved by my recognition of the fact that I can't solve the problem. I had a chuckle at my own expense, talked about it with my friend, and, for the most part, am letting it lie. I took a mental health day, yesterday. I didn't watch a minute of news, chatted a bit online with some friends of like mind, and took an afternoon nap with hubby and pooches.

It felt so good, I just might do it more often. And I slept so well, last night.

Too Much Life Going On....

2011-06-12T11:44:00.005-02:00

I was perusing the web looking for images of women juggling all the aspects of life. Most of the pictures were of women juggling home, children, mate and work or even items in a recipe. That's not really where most of us are, right now. The world is changing into a strange and scary place.

Most women are NOT singly focused on home and hearth or even jobs. We have our philosophies and our causes. These days, it's more like we are juggling chainsaws on a tightrope.

In every area of life, including the area of natural disasters, we are all cringing while waiting to see what comes next. The political scene, alone, is enough to make a grown woman cry. Like my friend said, there is more ugly stuff going on in the world other than adoption and some of it is worse.

That is not to denigrate the pain of those still working through the impact that having a child taken for adoption or being adopted has on one's life. It's just that if I had to pick a trauma, there are others that are a lot more crippling. I listed some of them in a previous blog. It seems we have a culture of victimology. "Get over it," is a bit harsh, but "recover and live" is workable.

I went through rape crisis counseling. One of the counselors said that, for her, it was about going through stages. First came the victim, then the struggler, then the fighter and, finally, the survivor. Funny, but she never referred to "victim" as a bad word. Also notable is the fact that many Mothers refer to ourselves, as a group, as survivors.

It was also important, in our recovery from being victims of rape to being survivors, to place the blame where it belonged. One woman wanted to blame her mother who was so insistent that she be "popular" that she encouraged her to date the guy who raped her. Many of us blamed ourselves for poor judgement of character or for choosing the wrong ride home, etc. ad infinitum. The fact is that we were afraid to narrow our focus on the person who was the real villain..the rapist. It was another way to avoid facing our fears and memories.

20th century psychiatry made blaming one's parents, chiefly the mother, for one's pain a popular concept. Many took that and ran with it. It gave them an excuse not to take responsibility for their own actions. It is always easier to blame than to examine who might be the real malefactor in adoption. It is especially difficult to blame a faceless Industry, a long-forgotten social worker and deceased parents. It is harder, still, for adoptees, to see the role of the adopter in the mix.

But once victimized doesn't mean forever a victim. There comes a point when it's not important how the jackass got into the ditch but how we can work together to get it out of there. As adults, we are responsible for our own survival, our own actions and words and how we respond to those in our arena of adoption activism. In every case where I have sought healing, I have found the tools were with me all along...inside me. So, if we looked inward for healing, perhaps we could look outward enough to work with each other and pull that damn donkey out of the ravine.

This issue is not 24/7 for me. As the title says, there is too much life going in. In the areas of financial stability, women's reproductive rights, the direction of our government, climate change and world-wide unrest, we are very busy keeping those chainsaws in the air. Our energies are being spread across a wider spectrum of causes and crisis. For OCD perfectionists like me, it is overwhelming. That is why the sniping, name-calling, carping, whining and otherwise making everything all about you in the adoption arena is trying my patience.

I am taking some mental health days...one or two a week. I'm retired, so that is no problem. Those are days when I don't worry about anything, turn off the news, step outside and know that the Universe is rolling along without the benefit of my august worry. While much of what goes on might somewhat affect me, not much of it is all about me...not even what happens within my own family.

Life today is frustrating. We are all survivors and we have earned a bit of serenity. There is no reason why we should allow our lives to be chaotic on a constant basis. Put down the chainsaws. Get off the tightrope. Now, breathe!

Doesn't that feel better?

Call Me Crazy, But......

2011-06-03T16:04:00.008-02:00

I've been less prolific on this blog for a while, here lately. I've not been withdrawn so much as...quiet. I've posted on Facebook, made political statements, chatted with friends and family, but I've not had much to say on this blog on a daily basis. The thought occurred to me that I might have said all there is to say about being a Natural Mother, adoption, reunion and the duplicity of agencies, governments and religions. From here on in, it's just repetition.

But the world is still with us and a friend noted, the other day, that there are more things in the world, today, than just adoption that are f***ed up. She's so right. Sometimes I hate to get out of bed. Every morning, I wake to a different world, with some small piece moved, removed, replaced or a new piece added. Change is a constant. And the ocean waves can be gentle or stormy. If I can't ride the waves, I shouldn't be in the ocean.

This is life. You either ride the waves or you sink. And we ALL get thrown in when we emerge from the womb and are set on our voyage with no choices as to how it begins. In the long run, it is what it is and what we make of it. I am finding that it is never too late to glean wisdom from other sources. I have watched people I love undergo positive and healthy changes. I have watched people I love continue to do the same thing, over and over again, and never get the results they want. I have watched people I love die, get ill, fight for their lives, succeed and be happy, be sad, and give up.

My son marched in a Gay Pride Parade in his small, southern home city. He isn't gay but he was strongly in support of his GLBT brothers and sisters and marched with the Young Democrats group. Some might wonder at the wisdom of him becoming involved in such a controversial issue in the middle of the redneck bible belt. I'm proud of him. And, as a wise father told his only child, a daughter, not too long ago.."stand for something or fall for anything." That got me to thinking. For what do I stand?

I stand for justice for the millions of young women treated like delinquents and trash during an era of hypocrisy and bias for the simple fact that they had sex (some coerced into it and some, even, against their will and most, out of love) and were fertile. I stand for the concept of giving due value and consideration to women, young and old, and their children. I stand for the civil and human rights of these mothers and their children.

I stand for the continued preservation of the right to choose for women and the right to birth control. My body...my choice. There is something enraging about a bunch of self-righteous men and their Stepford women telling us what we can and cannot do with our own reproductive lives.

I stand for the swift return of our armed forces from the dangerous and unpredictable places where our government has sent them.

I stand for the idea that any man or woman who chooses to present him/herself as one who represents us all, should have a complete understanding of that which he/she says he/she represents. Personality cults don't make for good representation. Intelligence, knowledge and acumen do. Integrity would certainly help.

I stand for a government who can combine enterprise with compassion, fiscal responsibility with a social conscience. I stand for the right of anyone to believe in and practice their faith...in their own homes and places of worship...but not to enforce their creed on us through our government. I stand for an end to fear as a vote-getting tactic.

I stand for an end to lies and corporate manipulation of our government. I stand for the kind of government we were taught about many years ago in school...OF the people, BY the people and FOR the people.

I stand for the right of all Americans to have a good education, a way to earn a living and a way to live and have a quality of life into their old age. I stand for the preservation of Medicare, Social Security and programs that aid the less fortunate. I stand for a cessation of the elderly having to choose between food and medicine. I object to outrageously, falsely inflated drug and medical care prices.

I stand for a responsible stewardship of our planet and its resources. I stand for alternatives that will help decrease this rape of the Earth. I stand for a world that is a fit place for our children's children's children to inhabit.

Yeah, most would say. Good luck with all THAT. You're right. All of that is a persistent but idealized dream that has been with me through all my quiet time. But if I stop dreaming, I might as well die. If I can't ride the waves, then I'll drown. So I sail on, getting wet, getting salt in my eyes, but still afloat.

This has been a hard and harsh time for our nation and our world and I don't see it getting measurably better in the very near future. That laundry list of stances I just posted is a big order for a civilization, much less an individual. If any of those things can be done, they will be done in small increments.

So that's what has been buzzing around in this old, gray pate of mine. As my ocular vision grows fuzzy, my social and spiritual and philosophical vision gets clearer and clearer,at least to me. Some might say that I over-simplify, but haven't we, our government and our society, over-complicated things to a ridiculous extent? I mourn what has been done to our nation, to our world. I cannot and will not accept that it can't be repaired.

It's just going to take a lot of time....something I don't have.

Conjectures, Urban Legends and Fantasies

2011-05-27T12:44:00.005-02:00

Nothing could possibly be more surreal than the landscape of our dreams and imaginations, especially when fueled by half-truths, lies and rumored legends. I'm not denying that there is a visceral memory and early childhood memories that are real and true for the adoptee. But over the years, adopters avoiding questions, the industry and adopters telling convenient lies, the social perceptions of adoption and being adopted, the mythology and the deepest wishes can create a picture worthy of Charnine or Dali.

The real and valid feelings the adoptee experience are the brush, but, too often, misinformation and unrealistic expectations are the paint with which the adoptee creates an idea of what might be. Meanwhile, Mothers are often busy either trying to blank out the canvas or, at least, present a fairy-tale image of happily ever after for their lost babies. This is why we meet each other across a barrier of warped images, coping mechanisms, preconceptions and a consciousness tainted by an unnatural separation. There is nothing natural about surrender or adoption and there is nothing easy or natural about reunion from what I have seen and experienced.

When I was in treatment at the Rader institute (for bulimia), we had a wonderful group leader who made a contract with each new patient when they joined his group. We had to promise, on a scale of one to ten, to not kill ourselves, not kill anyone else and not go crazy. I managed a ten on the first two but had trouble getting past six on the last one. He kept at me until I got to a ten. I kept trying to figure out why that going crazy thing was so attractive to me that I was reluctant to let go of it. I guess, like everyone else, I was looking for an easy way out and a way to live without having to face life. I was way past insecure and into the melting clocks and purple trees of self-loathing.

I had constructed an image of what life should be, for me and for my children, and it wasn't happening. I was not ready to step out of the fantasy and learn how to enjoy and appreciate and cope, healthily, with reality. I made a lot of progress at Rader. I grew up a lot. I accepted the process and the imperfections of life, people and myself. This all happened a few years prior to reunion. I shudder to think what might have happened had I not been through that particular refining fire.

I'll be honest that reunion took me a few big steps backwards and I had to retrace my steps to reality and sanity. None of the hopes and dreams I had for my two oldest children had come true. Their expectations and imaginations had created just as unreal a scenario as mine had. And it has been so hard to admit that we can't fix each other. It's like going into a museum and looking at a piece of surreal or modern art. Each of us see something different in the painting. Sometimes I wonder if we are even speaking the same language. All we know is that the connection is there and still strong.

Someone told me that no one could understand adoptees but other adoptees. They're right. The same holds true for Mothers. So we are often at an impasse with many of our number in seeking cooperation to achieve goals. There are those that see only the dark and those that won't give up the rose-colored glasses and then there's the pain competitions. That's the reality based on the surreality. So what we need to do is find a way to accept the reality of the other, even if we don't understand it.

Once again, I have set the bar pretty high, even for myself. I can accept that the adoptee FEELS abandoned, but MY children were NOT abandoned. And it is almost impossible for people in the generations following us to even begin to understand the pressure of society and family shame. Conversely, it is hard for us to understand how it feels to be a lilac on a magnolia tree..grafted on to another family and expected to be totally okay and comfortable with that. I can't begin to imagine how it must feel to experience that "otherness" and yet be expected to behave as if it doesn't exist.

So, we would all fit right into a painting by any of the surrealists...trying to get into each others' heads, walking on eggshells and traveling through alien territory. And we are trying to do this with a road map that is drawn from lies, suppositions, our own fantasies, manipulations and the official picture of surrender and adoption presented by the industry, government and society and (all too often) the church. It takes courage to toss away that poorly-charted map and do some serious exploring without any preconceived notions to shed false light on the path.

All this is a fancy way to say that we all need to get real. Where is the logic in, for instance, saying that "my mother is the bitch from hell so I am going to hate 'em all, mistrust 'em all and call them all 'birthmothers' regardless of what they want?" It makes about as much sense as saying that "my adult child is a selfish, whining, demanding monster so all adopted people are mean and childish." But there are Adoptees and Mothers who will say just those things. These folks are still out there with Bugs Bunny meeting up with the Dodo Bird. It's a fear factor...if it is true for them, then it needs to be true for everyone...illogical but human.

I don't know how long it will take for us to meet on a common ground that is acceptable to us both. For all the mistrust and misunderstanding, there is a need for connection, love and acceptance that is just as great as any of the hostility. I just hope we get there. There are a few willing to find common ground. There are those of us who want records open for adoptees AND mothers, who want the Industry investigated and past practices put under the microscope of public and congressional scrutiny and we are willing to stand up and identify ourselves.

What really pisses me off the most is that the main architects of this surreal social experiment are uncaring of the weird world they have created. There's money in it and they are not ready to see that their "wonderful solution" only created more pain and problems. Some of these geniuses passed thinking they had left behind a perfect legacy. And the Industry and PAPs and adopters are the ones who gain along with the high-paid lobbyists and the congressional palms they grease.

Them that has, gets.

Never Too Old To Learn

2011-05-26T18:59:00.004-02:00

Anyone who ever gets the idea that you reach a point where you have all the wisdom of life sewn up needs to be given a dose of reality. At 65, I am learning that you never stop discovering and you never stop changing. I'm a pretty stubborn "middle-aged-plus" dame, but I know it is unhealthy for me to not allow myself to continue to evolve. You're never too old to learn.

While I doubt I'll ever be able to tolerate the "B" word with grace, I have learned a lot about how different we all are, even with the shared experiences we have. I'm still anti-adoption but I have a more realistic view of how and when that institution might finally fall. It won't be in one night, like the Berlin Wall. It will take the constant and concentrated efforts of many different people, Mothers and the Adult Adoptees, chipping away on all sides to bring down that monolith. I doubt that will happen in my lifetime, but I'll go to my final reward still chipping.

I have been the object of some anger that was really misdirected. I have been dismayed to see us all lumped together as a group under that nasty Barfmuggle term, and I have been frustrated by the number of Adoptees who still see us as the cause and the culprit. I have also had my heart torn by watching these same Adoptees deal with their mistrust, frustration and sadness. I am teaching myself to remember that not everyone has reached the same level of healing and enlightenment. I'm working hard at not taking it personally.

I am also working hard at trying to help others understand the Mothers of coerced surrender. I really can't say too much about those who weren't coerced or who think they weren't, anyway. But when it comes to the whys and the hows of our separation from our infants, we are the experts. We were young, for the most part, naive, without autonomy, without financial independence, shamed, abandoned, betrayed and terrified. Our burden to bear is that we were old enough to remember it. The Adoptees bear the burden of the inability of our species to remember our infancies.

I know there are quite a few Mothers who have gone so deep into denial that they suffer from a sort of selective amnesia. I tried to do that and did manage to forget a few things...things that came back to me with a sickening rush over the first few years of reunion. Others are terrified that the house of glass they have built out of lies and secrets will come crashing down or are just terrified that they will have to face that trauma, again.

Our children, in our age group, are middle-aged adults, some even with grandchildren. They don't have a memory of the time spent in our wombs or what little time we had with them after they were born. All they know is what they were told and too often what was related to them was conjecture, urban legend and outright lies. How could they help but be confused and how hard must it be to trust? Mothers have their own trust issues so, though they are for different reasons, we're fighting the same demons, there.

My last two blogs have been about putting things into perspective. I am hoping that idea can be a healing one for some. There has to come a time in our lives when we stop blaming others, even our parents, loved ones, whoever, for our personal difficulties and start looking inward for answers. The social injustice issues are another thing, altogether. There IS blame to be laid, there and it isn't on us.

I strongly believe that a terrible injustice was done to us and to our children. I strongly believe that this injustice needs to be addressed, records opened, truths told and the entire concept of breaking up one family to form another investigated, thoroughly, and apologies and recompense offered. I also believe that it is okay, permissible, even good for us to let it be the rest of the time and live our lives with humor, humility, gratitude and optimism.

I consider myself an activist. But I cannot and will not live, breathe and eat surrender and adoption trauma twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. You see, this old broad learned something. I learned that I, that we all, deserved better then and we sure as Hell deserve better now. I want my "better" before I die.

So you'll excuse me if I don't rush to the altar of adoption separation pain, anymore. However, I'll be waiting at the door to the temple, ready to go get some work done and then have some fun when you get finished there.

I hope a lot of people I really like a lot are putting their best efforts into healing. I still am doing that. It's a learning process and you're never too old to learn.

Another Day, Another Clarification

2011-05-21T09:10:00.006-02:00

I wonder how many who read my blog on angst, drama and terminal uniqueness realized that it is about BOTH the mother AND the adoptee? I got some good comments and then I got some that, though complimentary in nature, showed that some didn't get it at all. Here is some clarification.

I did not say that what happened to mothers and adoptees was GOOD...just that it wasn't the worst thing that could happen to anyone in this nasty world. Mothers deserve acknowledgement and redress for the injustice and adoptees deserve the right to know their heritage. THAT hasn't changed. What I was addressing was this breast-beating anguish over something that can't be changed and that isn't as horrible as some of the tragedy that could be visited upon a person. I am a big fan of the idea that you shouldn't keep carping about something when you could be out there doing something about it.

The other thing I was trying to say is that NO infant has a choice about anything. Vlad Tsepes (Dracula) had kids. Would you choose him for a daddy? We BSE moms, and many of the moms that came after, were victims of an industry that had us believing we were giving our babies a wonderful gift of "better" parents. We REMEMBER being impaled by the sharp stake of loss. (How's that for dramatic?) A good friend of mine says that every drama should have a statute of limitations. After a certain period of time, it is old news and over. While surrender and adoption are not quite in that category, the anguish, tearing of hair and gnashing of teeth over it is no longer appropriate for most of us.

The name calling and thumb-sucking just gets to me. I had two children that were taken for adoption. ONLY THOSE TWO are any responsibility of mine. I am not the bad mommies of other adoptees. I do not owe you a thing because I did not have a thing to do with where you were or are. It is NOT all about the adoptee just like it is not all about the mother. Both parties have feelings and issues that are EQUALLY important. I have found that "un-friending" is a good way to preserve my serenity.

And both parties have a right to work through it and find a place of peace and happiness in their lives. You read on some sites and on FB and you would think that we all sat in our misery 24/7 and we don't need to be perceived that way. If you are miserable 24/7, then you need to seek professional help and find the answers within yourself. Ranting, raving and calling names won't change a thing.

The bottom line, for me, is this. When I was a teenager, I was betrayed, abandoned, made to feel shame, assaulted and suffered the loss of my newborns. That was awful and shame on any and all who contributed to that experience. I am no longer a teenager. I am a senior citizen and if I let all that happened almost five decades ago decide my current state of happiness, shame on ME.

To my adoptee friends, shame on all who really caused your adoption (the Industry, those who fuel it and society). But you are adults...some of you are even grandparents. If you are calling names and raging at all mothers, shame on YOU. Shame, especially, on those who refuse to accept the truth of the BSE and who lump all of us under the heading of birth things.

I have made some personal progress in recent years. There was a time when I would have likened our experience in the BSE to the Holocaust. Yeah, there were a lot of us, but most of us came out of it well-fed and alive though grieving. It is easy to over-dramatize just as it is easy to not take it seriously enough. Balance is essential. We all have lives to live and if I thought that I would be required to never know peace of mind or happiness because of that one aspect of my life, I would have ended it all, years ago.

And, of course, while the concept of a primal wound is feasible, it has, to too many adoptees, become THE PRIMAL WOUND (*terrified scream)!!!!! What has been done with a simple theory has become an excuse to consider one's pain more important and worse than anyone else's, especially the mothers. It has become an excuse for not facing issues and a way to blame others for their shortcomings. Hey guys! You are adults. The buck stops with you.

The ones who shout the loudest are the ones who want us to bow, scrape, prostrate ourselves upon hot coals while begging forgiveness for something that was as much done to us as to them. They say that they were the only INNOCENT victims and refuse to look at the times and social structure that made us vulnerable and helpless victims as well. Remember, that an adopter wrote that book.

Fine, as I have said before. Call YOUR mother anything you like, but I am not now, nor have I ever been, a birth thing. We want to help, but having it demanded of us, being told we owe this to strangers, those who are not even our own children, is not a good strategy. It just isn't the way to win our support.

Has it occurred to anyone that we have better things to do with our time than accepting abuse or dishing it out? Chicken Little says that the sky is going to start falling, today. I think I'll sit back, have a cup of Mocha Java, pet whichever dog winds up in my lap and watch the show. We'll probably grill burgers, tonight.

Now THAT's what I call "Rapture!"

Angst, Drama and Our Terminal Uniqueness

2011-05-18T12:15:00.004-02:00

I first heard the term, "Terminal Uniqueness," when I was in treatment for my eating disorder. I was learning about depression, self-involvement and how we could believe that we were worse than anyone else and hurt more than anyone else and were treated more badly than anyone else. All that negativity, that attitude, I learned, is a form of grandiosity, a claim to "ultimate specialness." I also call it the "more wounded than thou" syndrome.

We each live inside our own skins. No one else can get into our minds with us. We are on our own in there. Too often we commit the error of judging our insides by the outsides of others. Too often we don't accept our position as just another member of the human race. Way too often, I have learned to my own chagrin, we take ourselves much too seriously while not taking others as seriously as they merit being taken.

While in treatment and after years of attending Overeaters Anonymous and Al-Anon meetings, I have come to learn that Terminal Uniqueness can accompany the worst kind of self-pity. This is the kind of self-pity where we are so sure we are the Lone Ranger, that no one else but those in our position can possibly grasp the scope of our suffering and where we place blame and call names rather than pulling ourselves out of the mire of angst indulgence. This is the "warm pile of shit" they talk about in program. You sit in it so long that it becomes comfortable and you ignore the smell. This is where the fear of the unknown is too great to put aside the devil you know and reach out.

I noted, on my Facebook page, that coerced surrender to adoption and being adopted are not the worst or the only traumas people can experience. I was challenged, by an adopted person, to prove that by naming another experience that might be worse.

OK...try this one. During WWII, the Japanese invaded China. One story tells of a woman who watched the Japanese soldiers kill each of her children and her husband before her eyes and then, rape her repeatedly before taking her a prisoner and forcing her to serve as a "comfort woman"....an unpaid concubine for the Japanese troops. For her, rape became a nightly occurrence. She survived but was totally broken.

A friend of mine had a daughter who had fallen into bad company, was in a relationship with an abusive boyfriend by whom she had children and drugs were involved. My friend had managed to gain custody of her grandchildren right before her daughter's boyfriend beat her so badly he killed her, then cleaned her up, dressed her, put her in the tub and tried to say she went into convulsions. Right after that, this same friend lost her only son to injuries sustained long before in a motorcycle accident and her husband died a few short weeks later. They were not yet in their 60's.

In a little town in SC, three little children watched in horror as their mother put the barrel of a pistol in her mouth and pulled the trigger. Another child, coming home from school, found her mother hanging from the exposed beams in their den...she had hanged herself. A mother came home from work to find her son on the floor, dead from inhaling propane in a self-improvised gas chamber. A man went to his son's house to take him some food, hopefully to cheer him up after a painful break-up only to find him in his blood-spattered bedroom, a victim of his own hopelessness.

In famine-beset parts of the world, mothers watch their children die of hunger while they, themselves, slowly starve to death. People suffer long, slow, painful diseases that can only end in death while their helpless families watch. Children are kidnapped, tortured and killed by perverts. Shall I go on?

So "you got your troubles, I got mine." I refuse to pity myself and I am uncomfortable with pitying anyone else. Pity is not respect. Compassion can only go so far. I hate to see people doing what I once did...sucking on their resentment like a child sucking his thumb. Hate, resentment and derision hurt the person doing the hating worse than the hated. Resentment is a poison and stereotyping the objects of resentment is compounding the dose you consume.

I hate to come off sounding "preachy" but I am telling you what I have learned in hopes it might help you. If this causes one person to count their blessings and re-think their self-involvement, then I will be happy.

I've been molested and raped, but I don't think that all men are rapists or molesters. I was forced to surrender my two firstborn children to the adoption machine because my parents were ashamed, but I no longer resent my parents and I know that not all parents are bad. To carry that resentment with me would not be playing fair with myself or my loved ones. No one should live in pain for a lifetime over what was done to them when they were young and vulnerable.

Another mother and I were discussing how painful it was to talk about the fathers of our firstborns to them. The reasons were varied except for one...we loved these guys, very deeply, and they failed us. That was when she told me about the idea of recalling that piece of ourselves we left with these men and letting go. I thought I had done that, but I hadn't. Betrayal and abandonment was our lot, but it is not our identity. It was past time to move on with THAT one.

How much potential friendship must we lose...how much comfort and help must we turn aside until we just put on our big girl and boy drawers and get over ourselves? How many of us must shake our heads, sadly, realize that we tried and move on to living our own lives when we could have made a difference but for the resistance of the Terminally Unique?

I am sorry for such a downer of a blog post, but it was time for it. We are all special to someone and should be to ourselves. But that Terminal Uniqueness is dangerous stuff. To denigrate the pain experience of another and compare it to our own as being lesser-than is arrogant.

I am sick and tired of pleading the case of the BSE mothers to those who refuse to accept or listen because they are too busy sucking their thumbs of resentment. All you get from doing that is an unhappy life and a pruny thumb.

What Adoption Can't Do

2011-05-14T11:10:00.009-02:00

(This is Jocelyn. She thought she could improve on nature.)

It is amazing what people believe about adoption and what it can accomplish. Those of us in the arena already know that it doesn't guarantee a child a better life. We can only hope. We have to wonder, "better, how? More toys, money, and things?" Some people have searched so long and hard for "better" that they have ignored the good they have. Sometimes, you just can't improve on Nature.

It certainly is no longer a matter of saving a child from the scandal of being born to an unwed mother. Even today, many adults who were adopted as infants call themselves "Bastards" with pride. Of course, that is a good, English word that has been in effect for centuries and means, strictly, one who was born out of wedlock. It is unfortunate that it has also been used to mean a bad or cruel man. "Adopter" is also a correct, English word that has been around for a long time and means just what it implies...one who takes on someone or something to themselves as if it were theirs to begin with.

That egregious term, "birthmother" has only been around for a few decades and there are many of us who have engaged in a battle against it for years. Where has everyone been that some don't know this? We were given so little respect as single, pregnant women. Who does it hurt if we ask for a bit, now? Just an aside...back to the subject.

No, adoption is all about saving the ones who adopt...from what? It's about social engineering and making money. Here are a list of some things I wish my parents and I had known and that I wish everyone knew about adoption and what it cannot accomplish.

1-Surrender for adoption does not restore one's virginity or remove one's status as a mother. Once you give birth you are a mother and you cannot regenerate a hymen by signing away rights and responsibilities.

2-Adopting does not cure infertility. A couple can adopt until the seams of their McMansion bulges and, if it is either or both of them, the infertility is still there and the children they wanted of their union will never exist.

3-Adoption does not "create a family." Nature does that. Saying that a man-made institution can go one better on Nature is like patching together some polyester fabric and calling it a silk duvet cover. It can create attachments and generate loving relationships but that is the people involved doing that...NOT adoption.

4-Those who are adopted do not come to those who adopt as tabula rasa..a blank slate. They are who they were born to be and, if anything, adoption confuses and warps that. Personality, talents and physical characteristics are inherited, period. This idea causes so much harm to adopted children and people still insist that it doesn't. Grrrr.,

5-There is no such thing as a "birthmother" and having a child taken for adoption does not create one. For nine months, a woman's body, emotions and mind are conditioned for motherhood. Not being able to fulfill that function creates unresolved grief and escape into denial for the mother. Even the notable exceptions to the loving mother rule are, non the less, mothers. Nothing anyone calls us can make us less than the mothers we are.

6-"As if born to" is a crock!

7-Heritage and bloodlines DO matter and ARE important to the individuals. Our children had theirs stolen and we, or the image of a few of us, are being used by the industry and those who benefit from the industry, to try to place barriers in the way of our children recovering that heritage.

And what adoption CAN do is;

1-violate the civil and human rights of the mother...

2-violate the civil and human rights of the adoptee...

3-enable those who adopt to never face their issues in reference to their infertility....

4-make a lot of money for the Industry....

5-give smug satisfaction to those who wish to be social engineers...

6-tear apart a potentially viable family to meet the needs of others with more money, a marriage license or the right connections......

That's my list, can and can't. It saddens and sickens me to see it still causing rifts and wedges in the ranks of those who should be working together for the benefit of both the mother and the adoptee. As I get older, I lose the incentive to keep fighting. I get tired and I get frustrated and I want to chuck it all and say, "you're on your own, Kiddos!"

For instance, lumping together all mothers and calling us all barfmuggles is not right. Yes, there are some who are decidedly un-motherly, a minority to be sure, and it is sad that some of my adopted friends had to draw the bad ones. But tarring us all with the same brush is the same as saying, say, that all teenagers are irresponsible just because some of them are. It is demeaning and untrue. We all deserve to be judged as individuals and not by the lowest common denominator in our populations.

You see, in the battles for records, recognition, redress, and the disagreements concerning terminology, it seems to escape the notice of many that we are all just asking for the same damn thing....respect. Is it too much to ask or do I hang up my activist's hat and enjoy San Antonio with my friend as a vacation?

Do we just let adoption, which cannot do so much, win this one?

Puzzles

2011-05-10T10:45:00.006-02:00

I'm just doing some mental meandering, today. Perhaps, if I get these scattered thoughts out of my system, I can get a bit of focus going. For instance;

Why is it that almost every nasty, belligerent, argumentative comment on a blog is posted by some cat named "Anonymous?"

Why is it that misery not only loves company, but insists on repeatedly inviting you even after you have declined all previous invitations?

Why is it that so many people resist taking responsibility for their own responses and emotional welfare?

Why do adults continue to blame their parents for their bad behavior?

Why is it that we note other people with their heads up their butts while peeking out of our own anal orifices?

Why is it that some do not learn that the only ways to get respect are to (a) give respect and (b) respect yourself?

Why does it take us repeated attempts and failures before we realize that we cannot reason with (a) a drunk (b) a bigot (c) a door-to-door evangelist (d) a fanatic of any religion (e) drama queens and kings (*see the misery loves company question) (f) ultra-conservatives (g) an adopter or potential adopter (h)Donald Trump?

Why are there conspiracy theorists when there is no conspiracy and none to be found when there IS one?

Why are we, in the 21st century, having to fight to have our children taught pure science without religion? Creationism is NOT science.

Why would anyone vote for a guy named after a salamander for president?

Why does a biased media insist on calling itself "fair and balanced?"

Why do some people think it is OK to execute a prisoner but a sin to terminate an early pregnancy?

Why does anyone think it is any of their business what a woman does with respect to her own body?

Why does it take us so long to understand that we cannot "fix" other people or fix things for other people?

Why do Face book gamers think I want to mess with their farm, their fish, their questions or accept applications that will screw with my computer?

Why do I respond to demands by digging in my heels?

Why does anyone think they have a right to make demands of me?

Why are fanatically religious men so afraid of women?

Why did Princess Beatrice wear that hat?

And, Why, WHY does my female Rat Terrier go roll in the dirt the day after we bathe her?

An inquiring mind knows a lot of the answers but still likes to ask the questions.

It's OVER

2011-05-09T12:29:00.000-02:00

While I don't have the problem with Mother's Day that I used to have, I am still glad it is behind us..glad for a lot of people I know for whom it is a painful day, a day just to get through in one piece.

My Mother's day was lovely. While I had moments of missing my Mama, very much, I am more into being grateful that we had her for the time we did. She was special. And I have no regrets about my own motherhood, anymore. I did the best I could with what I had to do with at the time and, in the case of my two oldest, did the only thing I was allowed to do. My children were lovely, attentive and treated me like a queen. It was so nice. Hubby even came across with a nice gift, I didn't have to cook or do laundry or anything and it was Heaven.

But for so many people who were adopted and so many mothers who had their children taken for adoption, Mother's Day is torture. If they are still searching, closed records are a special source of irritation to them. Closed records, though, are irritating to all involved, Mothers and Adult Adoptees, reunited or not.

I can remember when every Mother's Day was bittersweet for me...sweet because I was raising two wonderful children, and bitter because there were two others that were not with me. It also took me a while to deal with Mother's Day after my own Mother suddenly passed away at the young age of 46.

I know Mothers and Adult Adoptees who have been rejected and have no reunion, even though they now know who and where. For them, the second Sunday in May is not a happy day. So much in their lives is unresolved. I have a dear Mother friend and a sweet (but effectively bitchy..LOL) Adoptee friend about whom I have special thoughts on Mother's Day. Hope is hard to have in some situations. They have pretty much been shown the door, thanks but no thanks, don't call me, don't come around, na na na na, hey hey, goodbye! I personally cannot understand such behavior and think it is execrable, but it happens.

That's when we have to look within to find what we need in life. I had a friend whose Mother died in childbirth and her father just sort of wandered off. She was raised by an aunt. She managed. I have a friend whose daughter was beaten to death by her boyfriend. She has, since, lost another adult child and her husband. She manages. My own husband's world was rocked by the suicide of his only child, a confused teenager. He has gone on to make his life mean something as a tribute to his son.

Their secret is no secret. They cherish life. They know that they are responsible for their own happiness and they don't lay the burden of their self-worth on the shoulders of others. It is when we immerse ourselves in the erroneous idea that the rejections we receive reflect on us rather than the rejectors, that we lose ourselves in pain. Adopted or not, Surrendering Mother or not, life is a crap shoot and we take the numbers that are thrown. We have the ball and we have to make the game a good one. No one else, no one event or person, can fill the cup. We fill our own cups and the better the attitude the more palatable the drink.

I am not trying to diminish the pain of anyone else. It is what it is. All I am doing with this post is offering a way to build a ladder and climb out of the pit. For some, like me, it takes a lot of counseling and some painful, personal epiphanies to get above ground level. It also takes a real and strong desire to get past the pain and learn how to deal with life. If you are there and are not fearful of being honest with yourself, it can be done. Things won't be perfect, but you will know how to sail the sea of life and how to patch your boat when your run into the reefs.

As I watched the devastation unfold in Japan, and the twisted wreckage of the American tornado outbreak, I had to realize that our trauma, while painful and worthy of recognition, is not the only kind of pain that can be visited upon the human psyche. It is not the worst or the best...it just is one among many. None of us are the Lone Ranger of emotional pain and suffering. What about the Mother in the famine areas of Africa who watches her child starve to death while she starves, too? There's an abundance of suckage, there.

Yes, there is a dark side to life, everywhere, just like we have learned about the darkness of surrender and adoption. But there are also macaroni necklaces, little handprints, double flowers, "edible bouquets," jokes, silliness, good books and music to dream by. You lose some, you gain some. I'm sitting in our doctor's office, right now, while hubby is getting his check-up. He has some problems, but he IS 71. He is actually in pretty good shape and the doctor is pleased...so far. Yay...small miracles and tiny bits of sunshine. I am learning to keep these things in my pocket and pull them out when the gray days hit.

To all my friends who struggled through Mother's Day, it's MONDAY!! It's over and you might want to look for something about which you can be happy as your self-assigned, Monday chore. It's there if you look hard enough. It won't make the bad part go away. But it balances those scales and life IS a balancing act. I also send you all the warmest and most sincere hugs I have to give because I know what it's like.

So, that is my post-Mother's Day wish for all. May you have balance, hugs and happy moments.

In the final analysis, what else is there?

Flat Earthers, Birthers, Good Beemommies, Adopters, PAPs and Mother-Hating Adoptees

2011-05-06T12:07:00.001-02:00

Now what do all of these have in common? Willful Ignorance with a capitol "I." The Flat Earthers believe, contrary to centuries of scientific evidence, that the world is flat..not a sphere and many still opine that the earth is the center of the Universe.

"Birthers" believe, despite all legal evidence to the contrary, that our President is not a native-born American. Maybe they weren't aware that Hawaii is a state and has been for many, many decades? These are the same staunch Righties that believe Bush took down Bin Laden and that Donald Trump, Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann are viable presidential candidates. THAT is a shudder-worthy thought.

Those mentioned above also hold that a woman isn't really a rape victim unless she has been beaten, stabbed and near death. If she has a weapon used against her and submits to save her life, then it isn't rape. If she went out on a date with the Prick that assaulted her, then she asked for it, especially if her clothes were, in any way, what, say, Pat Robertson would consider "provocative." HR3, the bill that has, very recently, passed the house that calls for "rape investigation" before a victim can be granted an abortion, proves that we even elect the willfully ignorant to national offices. Somebody either isn't voting or our nation is in deep ignorance doo-doo.

Good beemommies refuse to think, contrary to all they have been told, all the warnings they receive and all the good advice they receive from those of us who have been there, that surrender to adoption is harmful to both them and their children. They are of the "I'm different so that won't happen to me" school of thought. Yeah, right. Go live in La La Land and feed off the approval of adopters and religious pundits and see how happy that makes you in the long run. Call us older Moms bitter and angry. You'll get there, eventually. Meanwhile, I hope you can breathe with your head in the sand.

Adopters and PAPs? Well, what can I say? They are also "different." Their desire for a child is righteous, to them, and they cannot see the potential damage to the child and the pain of "their (blech)mother" for the strength of their own self-entitlement. The children they adopt are "grateful" and "happy" and have been saved from a fate worse than death...being who they were born to be. A good many of these candidates for faux sainthood still believe the human infant is a blank slate and that they will bond with whomever gives them nurture. The reject the idea that attachment is a survival instinct and that the adopted child is always dealing with abandonment issues, identity issues and general confusion while trying to do their job of keeping the adopters happy. Even a book written by an adopter that tells, well, most of the story, is ignored by the more rabid. Personal desires overcome education and THAT is willful ignorance.

The Mother-hating adoptee, and these are not as prevalent as they once were, are the ones who drank the Kool-Aid served by their adopters and society that says they were unwanted by their mothers. Some have some pretty bad natural mothers and have a reason for how they feel, but tend to want to tar us all with the same brush. Some stay angry at Mom regardless of how nice she is, how welcoming she might be because, like most who are willfully ignorant, thinking any other way is scary. I have to say that many of these people have learned a little and are not as resistant to the learning process as others. But there are still the die-hard haters who firmly believe we want confidentiality and anonymity and are fighting their quest for open records and little we can say will change their minds.

And what is really behind willful ignorance? Fear? Flat-Earthers fear not being at the center of life. Birthers are racist and fear any change, even for the good, in our society, especially if it involves those who are different from them. Good Beemommies are just scared, period. They fear the loss of the approval of those around them and doubt themselves in a big way. They are afraid of themselves and would rather remain insecure than growing a set and stepping up to the plate of their responsibility. Adopters and PAPs fear the loss of their fairy-tale and the Mom-haters fear the great unknown of their beginnings.

As we have seen, fear can make people vicious. It, like ignorance, is a weapon wielded by politicians, proselytizers and dictators to keep people in line and with the program. Some soak it in more readily than others. Racism, elitism, dogmatism are all Little Red Books of fear. HR3 brings out the fear of women having any autonomy in our society. The Good Old Boys Club is alive and kicking.

And coercion and warm, fuzzy propaganda still spews from the Adoption Industry and those who benefit from it. Willful Ignorance lives.

Sigh.

Shutting Out The Noise

2011-05-05T12:19:00.000-02:00

I've been going through some notes taken while in counseling/treatment for an eating disorder. I've applied the twelve-step program to a lot of things in my life. Sometimes I get off track, but I usually have a good friend speak up or a word on a page stand out to get me back into what works for me. Lately, it has been hard. The world has been overwhelming.

We have been overwhelmed by our own struggles as well. At times, there is so much real life happening that it's hard to stand back, look at things objectively and get back to work on that for which we can do something worthwhile..ourselves.

I read something from my didactics notes, something simple that has been said in so many different ways but is true no matter how it's said. "I can only deal with one life at a time...MINE." Those among us who are terminally unique might think they can control the flood but all they do is stir the waters. Those who go into emotional melt-down at every occurrence or fly off the handle at the reactions of others are making it all about them.

Late Sunday night, a number of euphoric crowds burst into celebration. It was cathartic. It was the marking of an action that closed the era of a mad man, a resurgence of national pride, and it gave hope to these people. It wasn't done to offend any sensibilities. It was also not up to anyone else to judge their reaction as appropriate or inappropriate. Should all the OBCs be made available and the issues of mothers whose children were taken for adoption be addressed, we would probably have a bit of a wing-ding, ourselves and that would probably offend a lot of adopters and adoption professionals. But, Justice is a heady thing. So, it would suck to be them.

Making all that happens all about oneself is the truest form of ego run rampant. I have seen people brought to their knees in fear and angst or spurred to aloof criticism by the execution of Bin Laden, like they are the only people with any interests or involvement or even a valid response in and to this event. The fact that this will have a major historical and cultural impact seems to have passed by the radar of many. They seem too busy judging and finding something lacking in the responses of others.

People are "tired of this" and "sick of that" and I have to wonder what is beneath that emotional elitism. Yeah, I get sick and tired of a lot of things. I dislike ugly, partisan politics but it is a part of our real lives so I chose a party that comes the closest to what I believe without following blindly, and say what I truly think about the other guys. If you don't like it, don't read it. I would normally think that I am the last person on anyone's mind if I hadn't been "semi-quoted." That's always a shock to my system but, hey, I calls em like I sees em.

In examining my own tendencies towards terminal uniqueness, I have had to remember something I sometimes tend to forget. We might all be together on the issues of surrender, records, adoption, etc., but we are all individuals with our own political, religious and social ideas and opinions. I cannot please everyone or be everything to everyone. I do not have to think, feel or believe down the line with my sisters and brothers in this arena for what I believe or what they believe to be valid.

Meanwhile, we are living our own lives, each of us. We can face disappointment, worry and frustrations on an individual basis without taking on the emotions and trying to control the responses of everyone else around us. We are arrogant when we cry the tears that rightfully belong to another. And another's criticism/judgment of me is not really about me...it's about them and there is not a damn thing I can do about that. Conversely, others can be sure if I disagree with them, it is about me. My opinions, ideas, thoughts and actions are my own, for good or ill. But I will not go into a tailspin of psychological angst over any of it. That makes me as guilty as anyone else of making it all about me.

So, the killing of Bin Laden is only about me insofar as I am a patriotic American. There, it ends. I am a Senior Citizen and a woman with daughters, a granddaughter and a great-granddaughter. I am a mother whose two oldest children were taken for adoption. Those issues that affect those areas of my life are important to me.

It's open season on Donald Trump and Sarah Palin for comic relief. Oh, and dark humor is appreciated...well, here, anyway.

How To Get Back On Track?

2011-05-04T12:38:00.001-02:00

I have been feeling completely off the rails the past few weeks. So much has been happening in the world from the terrifying to the completely inane. The economy has had everyone on edge and notables and the infamous have been putting on a show of major magnitude. I feel like I and all my surrender and adoption issues have been buried under a boxcar load of heavy cargo.

From the Japanese quake and tsunami to the Royal Wedding, from The Donald showing his combover to the tornadoes in the south, from the stupid Sheen meltdown and the Flying Spaghetti Monster Hat to a group of Navy Seals storming a compound...from the ridiculous to the sublime...we have been inundated with a mudslide of important and unimportant events. From funny to frightening, we have run the gamut in such a way as to leave us gasping for breath and hoping things will quiet down for a while.

If someone with a lot of power had deliberately set out to distract me, they couldn't have done any better. I have watched the world go crazy and seen mountains move. Mother Earth really got into the act. Thousands of Japanese and hundreds of Americans were killed by Nature run rampant and I cried. One evil man and a few of his cohorts were killed and I nodded in satisfaction.

That last one was a problem for a lot of people. So caught up were some, in their moral compasses or religion, that they wanted to condemn those who celebrated. I see it as different strokes for different folks, but I, personally, celebrate Justice. It was a righteous mission and a meteing out of justice that was long in coming.

JUSTICE. That is such a big word. It means different things to different people. Mothers of coerced surrender from the EMS have talked about it for years. Is justice a public apology, an inquiry, acknowledgement, or a class action suits taken all the way to the Supreme Court? Is it the ultimate take-down of adoption as we know it?

Most don't see it as something for which we can accept money as a recompense. This issue goes to the heart of how this nation treats women and children, especially the more vulnerable among us. It also shows the worst of what can happen in a system that is so heavily capitalistic that everything has a price and the bottom line is more important than the family and the rights of ALL the people.

I think that the idea of justice, as a value, is bringing back my focus. I have seen the field from which the GOP might select a candidate for 2012. If any of those people make it into the White House, then I hope the Mayans are right and the end of the world happens then. If not, then I will look into immigration in a hurry. Any sliver of a chance we have to re-direct or reform this cluster f**k called adoption would be out of sight, totally. In my opinion, we still have a chance that someone will listen to us, but, right now, the movers and shakers have bigger fish to fry. Keeping Planned Parenthood going with my support is about the best I can do right now...that and saying my piece here on my blog.

They say you're never too old to learn. I have finally learned the true meaning of "special interest group." That's what SMAAC is. That's what the Open Records campaign is. Those things are important, YES. VERY important. But sometimes, life comes along and de-rails you in order to let you know that you are not the only petunia in the onion patch....that some things are bigger and worse than you think your personal trauma is and was. We are not the only ones to experience bad things in our lives.

And sometimes, the best way to get back on track is to count your blessings and realise that it's not always all about you.

Judgment, Criticism After All This?(A Non-Adoption Blog Post)

2011-05-02T16:00:00.001-02:00

Seriously...I am so tired of the Conspiracy Theorists, the racist detractors, Trump and Tea Baggers and the tired efforts of corporate America, the Religious Right Wing and Wall Street to remain in control of all our lives and ability to make our own personal choices.

For those who think it is inappropriate for me to celebrate this event, the death of a self-proclaimed enemy and murderer of Americans and others, I am sorry you feel that way. I care about American lives as much as anyone else, but this was an important and well done action. We are flying the flag today, in honor of all who perished and in gratitude for a modicum of justice.

We have had precious little to celebrate in a long, long time. If celebrating the demise of pure evil is wrong, then count me among the wrong. Yes, I know there will probably be reprisals and our people are being alerted and our security systems and armed forces are on alert. I am hoping that our traveling citizens will not be so arrogant or careless as to ignore the warnings and that the watch is increased here at home.

Yes, I care about the lives lost in Afghanistan and Iraq and everywhere else. But those soldiers fought for our right to celebrate even a small victory. Those of us who celebrate have no less regard for the sacrifices made and the innocent that were killed than those who are taking the somber but no more contemplative road.

This is not a day for judgment, criticism, and division. It is a day for reflection, hope, facing some hard realities and, yes, celebrating. We cannot continue to judge each other by our religion, or any other yardstick as to what "should be" the appropriate response to the death of Osama Bin Laden. Let's each just live and let live and do our own thing. Besides, this is "rendering unto Ceaser" if ever there was such.

As far as the role of our President is concerned, he has been in the loop and directing things since the first intelligence reached him in August. Whatever you think of him, this didn't happen on Dubya's watch. President Obama just made a simple statement to the press. He didn't fly in as a fighter jet passenger, in a flight suit, to deliver erroneous information. He's the one who gave the order. I am proud of my president. I am a hard-working, patriotic liberal. I support and respect the decision, the action and the man who gave the order AND HIS OFFICE. Special thanks to the brave SEALs and other military personnel who put the order into action.

To those who want to party, don't let the critical comments get you down. Sing the national anthem, sing "Hey Hey, Goodbye," wave your flags and be glad you're an American. To those who feel quiet reflection and silence are a better route, go for it. You all have my support. But for Pete's Sake, let's allow this to further unite us, not divide us.

Oh, and I do not post comments from those who call the President a liar or act like Trump. As an unmarried, pregnant girl in the early 1960's, I got my fill of elitist moralizing at the expense of the vulnerable, people playing the blame game and everyone sitting in the stinking status quo and seeing commies under every rock. I refuse to play any part in my country going back there for more reasons than just my personal experience.

Everybody get down from your high horses and give this day whatever you feel you should. But stop with the criticism, already. Some things are bigger than the individual and this is not about any one of us. It's about all of humanity.

Have You Hugged Your Mom/Child Today?

2011-04-19T10:50:00.000-02:00

In the midst of all that is frightening and sad in this crazy world of ours, there come moments of beauty. I felt my heart literally fill up and soar for a dear friend, yesterday. Her reunion with her adult son has been troubled and marred with many broken promises of meetings, painful phone conversations, anger and hurt. It isn't rare and that is sad to know, but when it happens to you, it is YOUR pain.

On April 18th, after many years with no contact other than sporadic phone conversations, my friend spent her son's 44th birthday with him and it was good. She also got to know her "other" grandchildren and an adorable great-grandson. A lover of warm climates, she made the trek north into the late, spring cold and warmed her heart. It was worth the trip.

I can't convey her feelings. I imagine she will do that at some point, herself. But I know that I felt a thrill for her. She now has one of those special memories to hold inside. Her reunion, over two decades, is why I say "Never say Never." You never know what might come to pass if you go about your business of making a good life for yourself and keeping the door open for the missing loved one.

I wrote a blog the other day about an adult child being rejected by her Mother. For many years, my friend felt the sting of this rejection from her son. I dare say that the rejections were caused by the same affliction...self hatred. The problem is that the other person has to hurt for one's hatred for oneself. Those that experience this hatred of self, often prefer to live in denial and lies rather than make that fearful journey into the unknown, to self-esteem. Self-pity and emotional distance are easier to handle because those are the devils they know.

No reunion is perfect. Only the best at wearing false faces never hit roadblocks or find themselves in contention with each other. Someone likened, on FB this morning, adoption to the "mental ward of the world." Good analogy! There are more old wounds, insecurities, misinformation and confusion in this arena than you can find, even in the world of politics and that is saying something. For the most part and from my observations, I would say that we and our children have been royally screwed and they didn't even buy us dinner.

It takes courage to go back, time and time again, to try to repair the damage, create a relationship and put your emotions on the line. Most of us have learned to cherish the good moments and work through the rough times. There are no guarantees.

Two people whom I hold in high esteem, put themselves out there in the past few days. One had a successful encounter and one had heartache on a sheet of legal pad. But they both are resilient and brave and I am proud of both of them.

There are people (some of them very arrogant and self-promoting) who insist that being anti-adoption is unrealistic. They say there will always be a need for it. I see that there will always be a need for some sort of secure, child-centered way to care for children that won't mess with their identities or heritage. But nothing, NOTHING, can make me see adoption as even a necessary evil to that end. I hate it. I hate what it has done to millions of Mothers and their children. I hate that it has created a minefield out of what should be a natural and comfortable relationship.

To my Sister Mothers, to my dear Adoptee friends...Kudos for your courage in walking through the minefield. Group Hug, anyone?

Too Much Going On

2011-04-17T15:22:00.002-02:00

As Marvin Gaye used to sing,
                                               "Picket lines and picket signs,
                                                Don't punish me with brutality,
                                               Talk to me so you can see,
                                               What's going on, Ya, what's going on.
                                                Tell me what's going on,
                                                I'll tell you what's going on."

A friend of mine, who is also a mother, made a comment the other day that sort of stuck with me. She told someone else that, these days, "adoption was the last thing" on her mind. I can understand her meaning.

I hate to say it, but I have been so derailed by all the horrible things that have been going on with the budget debates, tea party viciousness, the middle east becoming a powder keg with a lit fuse, the natural disasters here and abroad, that I am on frustration overload. There is too much happening to concentrate on just one issue.

To say that I am afraid of the idea of people like Trump, Palin, Huckabee, Beck, Romney, Paul, Gingrich, etc., inciting the fundies, the fearful and the ignorant is putting it mildly. While they rail against a bit of socialism, they are diving deep into fascism. They preach hate, fear and all the things that we fought against back in the 60's. They are trying to undo all the progress that was made and take us back into Reactionary Heaven. That any of the above-mentioned might actually make it into the White House is a thought that makes me nauseated. I would not want to live in this country should that happen.

The idea that a budget debate should include anti-choice riders stunned me. The misinformation about exactly what Planned Parenthood does is unbelievable. Here it is again, folks. Only 3% of what PP does has anything to do with abortion services. What abortions are provided are, as the law demands, paid for with private funds, NOT taxpayer funds. Are we clear, now? Some nice people, among them the Gates, who believe women should have access to needed care in that area, have donated monies for that purpose. OK?

Just a few short weeks after tens of thousands lost their lives in Japan, our country was under the gun of Mother Nature. The tornadoes struck and lives and homes were lost. They are still studying the Chernobyl-level disaster at Fukujima and the effects it will have on Japan and the rest of the world.

In the middle east, students, women and people who are not afraid to open their minds and question are pitting themselves against despots and theocracies. People are dying so that some powerful leader can hire Beyonce' to perform at a birthday party and add another yacht to their fleet. Of course, we have to worry about the Taliban stepping in and using what these people are doing for their own purposes.

IF we survive all of this, then the environment needs immediate attention. We have abused our home, this beautiful, blue planet, for too long and she is going to strike back. Spaceship Earth is under attack from its passengers.

I had my two oldest children taken for adoption 49 and 48 years ago. We have been reunited since 1993. I have learned and grown in my knowledge of this crime against mothers and babies. I have also come to the realization that this is just one abomination among many. If there is a way to abuse, use and exploit others, the users will find it.

I unsubbed from a few alert groups, like Care One. I can't be all things to all people and I cannot support every cause that comes down the pike...some of them sounding absurd, though true. "Stop Painful Breast Ironing in Cameroon?" Yes, that does indeed sound horrible. But someone else is going to have to step up to the plate on that one. My plate is full to overflowing.

There's too much going on.

Just A Note To Say......

2011-04-13T11:41:00.001-02:00

She agonized over that letter. She was placing herself on the line. Years of hopes and longings and needs went into that carefully worded but heartfelt missive. She sent it off with her heart in her throat, hopeful, yet afraid to hope. She just wanted her Mother and Mother's track record, to date, had not been very good. She sent it Certified and knew when it was received. She just kept putting one foot in front of the other and functioning as she waited for a response.

What she received back from her Mother was more than a dismissal. It was an insult. It was cruel. It was hand-written on a piece of paper torn from a legal pad. It had phrases in it like "I made the right decision" and "have a good life" or things of that nature. She didn't even sign it "Mother."

I opined, and I think I am right, that this Mother really hates the person she was when she conceived her daughter, gave birth and surrendered. It was all her dirty little secret, something she wanted to pretend never happened. Her adult daughter gave the proof to the lie. But Good Old Mom keeps hanging on to the lie by her fingernails, determined to erase that which can never be erased. To protect the lie that she mainly tells herself, now, she must reject the product of an ill-considered relationship. The problem is, that she can't escape herself. Where ever she goes, there she'll be.

I want to tell her that one of my children was conceived in an act of violence...rape. But he is not his sire. He is my child. He doesn't make me feel bad about something over which I had no control. His presence doesn't bring up the horror of his conception when I see him or talk to him because I separated him from that a long time ago. Rather than lying to myself about it, I sought counseling and healing.

Our pasts are part of us all until the day we die. It forms, defines and refines us. You can learn from some mistakes and consign them to the memory vaults. But you cannot just dismiss, out of hand, an adult child without causing some real pain. This Mother is either heartless or is so numb to her own feelings that she is sure her daughter will not hurt. I won't begin to claim to know what convoluted reasoning is in her head. I just know she is wrong.

In the AA "Big Book" there is a passage called "The Promises." One of these promises is that "we will neither regret the past nor wish to turn our back on it." There was a time when shame and guilt kept me from re-visiting the events of my first two pregnancies. There was a weird kind of denial going on in me that I could be the person that I would have been if IT had never happened. That's hogwash. When I embraced the lessons I had learned and acknowledged my grief and loss, then I began to really grow. I am fortunate in that the growth began before reunion.

That need to erase the past and that denial can create an emotionally stunted human being if one is not careful. I understand why this woman is so resistant. I can even feel for her. But I cannot excuse her. It's past time to grow up and move on to the fullness of who she is. The young woman who was in an unwise relationship needs to be forgiven. I wish I could wave a magic wand and open the blind, inner eyes of many a rejecting mother...or rejecting adult adoptee for that matter.

That's the bitch of it. I can think of, right off the top of my head, 11 women, who would give their last drop of blood to receive the kind of letter from their adult, surrendered child, that this woman sent to her mother. They have been treated like crap by their lost children. The dynamics of having a child taken for adoption or being adopted and trying to search, to reunite...It's like walking into a mine field. The social engineers and the human traffickers have created a major cluster fuck and they don't even care. They are too busy counting the money.

They bill themselves as "helping to build families." What they have helped build is heartache.

I wish I could make it better, Sweetie.

Pissed Off And Proud

2011-04-10T10:52:00.001-02:00

Yeah, I'm angry! What about it? You think it's "not nice?" Well, too freakin' bad for you. In many situations, anger is not only the appropriate response, it is the strong and righteous one! Do you agree? You might want to check out "One Million Pissed Off Women" on Face Book.

I have a good life. I have a wonderful husband, terrific children, raised and reunited, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, fantastic friends and family and two little terror..er, terriers to lighten my days. So, most of the time, things are copacetic and I am at peace. But then I turn on the news, read my Internet news feed or read on FB and I reach a state of fury in seconds.

Anyone who denies that the reactionaries and the theocrats are waging a political and cultural war against women, with women in their ranks for Crissakes, is in deep denial doo doo. The way to control a culture is to control the family and the way to control the family is to control women and their ability to determine their own reproductive choices. Women have been repressed for thousands of years because we can do something men can't..we bring forth life.

Now, one might wonder what this is doing on a page that centers on the injustices done to unmarried mothers in the last century. Well, isn't the right to keep one's infant and raise it also a reproductive choice? That is the alternative that is never mentioned in the old "abort/adopt" argument put forth by the anti-choice faction. I have NO doubt, whatsoever, that the adoption Industry is standing by and watching this, egging it on, greasing palms, doing a bit of creative directing, and rubbing its avaricious, stained hands in glee.

If we want justice, then we have to be aware that we are struggling, right now, against being taken back to square one where a woman's personal autonomy is concerned. Redefining rape, questioning culpability in miscarriages, defining "uterus" as a dirty word and cutting off access to birth control would send us back to the bad old days of housewives in pearls and heels, subjugated by hubby while Peyton Place seethes in the background.

For those who long for those "good old days" when things were simpler and they had cigarette ads on TV and twin beds in the movies and sitcoms, know that Grace Metalious wrote about the parts of life that no one acknowledged. It took me decades to see the hypocrisy of those days. We were taught lies in American History in school and Communism was Satan's tool and "Under God" was added to the Pledge of Allegiance. Meanwhile, in those legendary, smoke-filled rooms, the witch hunters and the fat cats did their business. McCarthyism was in full bloom, generals advocated use of the Big One, paranoia and discrimination were rampant, but, yeah...those were the good old days, right?

Those were also the days when millions of young women, mostly middle-class, white teens, were shipped off to "stay with an aunt" and prepped to surrender their precious cargo. We were the object of scandalized whispers. No matter what goodness and decency resided in our makeup, we were seen as deviant and delinquent while the boys who were 50% of the conception process got off with a wink and a nudge. It truly sucked to be female, single and pregnant in those days.

There are those who would argue that it's not that much better, today. But, whether anyone wants to admit it or not, women DO have more choices available and less criticism if they choose to be single mothers. Those choices are precious! They are part of the awakening from the Victorian blindness of the early part of the 20th century. They are milestones in the progress of the rights of women that were denied for so long.

Bit by bit, state by state, we are being forced back into that old mold of the compliant wife, responsible for our virginity even if it's taken by force, and prized only for that little piece of tissue being intact when we reach the altar. And it is all because of that same old issue...FEAR. Men don't want women running any part of the show. We scare them because we bring compassion and social awareness to the arena. If they don't control us, I think they fear we will control them. I don't know what to say about the women they have enlisted in their fight that stand by them except that I know some of them, care deeply about a few of them and am appalled and confused by their actions.

I really wish that NOW weren't so laden with those who adopt. Perhaps, if they weren't, they could see our plight as a valid reproduction issue rather than concentrating on birth control and abortion rights. It is interesting that they list adoption as a reproductive right, which it isn't, and yet leave out the right of the single mother to keep and raise her child. NOW has disappointed me badly and I question their leadership in the light of what is going on now.

To me, it looks like we are going to have to roll up our sleeves and keep a sharp eye on what is happening. The only weapon we have is our voice. Speak up, speak out and don't let them get away with this horror. Write letters, emails, talk to people, discuss the issue and be careful with your vote.

Help stop the War On Women.

If Anyone Wonders Why.....

2011-04-04T16:04:00.002-02:00

This past weekend, my oldest child's paternal grandmother passed away. She was a sweet lady who always treated me with kindness and a gentle respect. The same was true of her late husband.

I don't know what happened to her son. We were both teens, close together in age, and my family was adamant that there would be no marriage. So was my errant lover. He was scared to death. I wonder if my family had allowed it, would his folks have made him marry me? From what I know of those fine people, yes, they probably would have, if only to give their grandchild a name.

But it had already been decided, on my family's part, that there would be no marriage and that "the baby" (MY BABY!!!!!) would be given up for adoption. They decided that, not me.

When my daughter contacted me in April of 1993, I was ready with any information she wanted, including the name of her father. For her, it was important that "the circle be closed." I knew that, where her father was concerned, I was persona non grata, especially to his wife. So, we decided we would contact her paternal grandparents.

No one could have been sweeter or more welcoming to her than her grandparents. They considered her family, at least until her father decided that he didn't want that happening. She had met him only once and he was not eager to acknowledge her even though she could tell he knew she was his daughter. He eventually cut off all contact with her.

She sent a floral arrangement when her grandfather passed but the family had it removed. He spent years denying that she was his to anyone who would listen. His family knows better. However, they ARE his family, so my daughter is a subject not to be discussed because he wants it that way. He has a sister that is kind and open to her and to me, but her loyalties are, first and foremost, to her brother.

So if anyone wonders, this is why I get frustrated with the "good old Dad" stuff that I hear from a lot of adult adoptees. When I say that many of us were abandoned in our time of need, know that the "putative" fathers were usually the first ones out the door and running down the road. This didn't just happen to SOME of us. It happened to MOST of us.

Remember young love? Remember the lovely ache of it, deep in the chest, the fire in the belly and the stars in your eyes? Remember the sweet dreams and the joys of just being held and kissed and hearing those sweet words? I would have carved out my heart for him, back then, and handed it to him in an ivory box lined in silk. I lived to see him look into my eyes and smile.

The reaction of my family and some of my former friends really hurt. Being sent away like a dirty little secret hurt. Being a social outcast hurt. But one of the things that hurt the most was that uncaring rejection, that being kicked to the curb like so much rancid garbage by the one I loved. The only other thing that hurt worse was the loss of my child.

He spoke about me to others in the most disparaging of ways, hinting that I was easy and promiscuous. He lied like a politician who was losing. And, stupid me, I still loved him! It took me years to get over him and, when I finally did, I felt a thousand pounds lighter. Obsessive masochism is a heavy load and he wasn't worth the damage it did to me.

He is now doing the same thing to our daughter, kicking her aside and refusing to acknowledge her. She offered to have a DNA test done just to still his protests, but he refused. And the ultimate insult to her is his refusal to allow her to join in the mourning for her grandparents.

I remember them both stumbling over words, way back when, trying to make excuses for him and apologies to me. I was, and still am, grateful to the core for their kindness. Their hearts were in the right place and the world is poorer for their passing. I see the best of them in my daughter.

I lit a candle for Hazel. I hope there is something there, on the other side of death, and that she is with her husband again. I hope they both are at rest.

I just wish my daughter didn't have to mourn, alone.

Birthdays Are Getting Better

2011-04-03T12:44:00.003-02:00

I think one of the hardest things for Nmoms and Adoptees is the birthday. I noted, on my daughter's card, that her birth is the one thing that no one else can share with us...it happened to the two of us and no one else. When you are in the limbo of closed, secret adoption and not reunited, birthdays are horrible. It is the anniversary, for many of us, of the beginning of the end.....Motherhood legally deleted and baby gone away...not a good thing to remember.

I had a ritual during the years we spent apart. On each child's birthday, I would buy a cupcake at the bakery, put in a candle and go off by myself for a bit. Often I cried the entire time I was "celebrating."

My daughter's birthday is Wednesday. April is such a lovely month but it was always hard for me to get through as was June, my son's birth month. The cards I send each year are an affirmation that I have mourned the loss of my babies and accepted, with love, the presence in my life of these two adults who are my flesh and blood.

I mentioned, in my previous post, that I considered myself my children's only true mother. I need to emphasize the "I" there in that sentence. My children know how I feel. They also know that I respect their feelings for those who raised them. That is how I, personally, feel, many of my adoptee friends also understand that feeling in me and it hasn't been a "deal breaker" for my reunions. I can never and will never bow at the altar of the adopters.

One reason is that awful concept of "Gotcha Day." What idiot adopter thought that a child would like this kind of celebration? Their birth is as important to them as non-adopted children. To me, that Gotcha thing is as inane, facetious, and distasteful as female adopters taking hormones and trying to breast-feed their acquired children.

One thing that I have learned in the past 17 years since I emerged from the good beemommy fog is that adopters are NOT a lot of things. They are not perfect, saintly, superior or deserving of praise just because they got what they wanted. They are human beings. They make the same mistakes that every one else makes in equal proportion. They can be hateful, hostile, possessive and insecure. A few develop the ability to bite their tongues and be concerned about what the adopted person needs. I'll bet that's hard to do.

I will never tell an adopted person that they shouldn't love their adopters or see them as rightful parents. That is their prerogative and not mine. I will respect how they feel. They have a shared history with these people that we, unfortunately, were denied. Just don't expect me to love them, too. Don't expect me to put up with hostility with my head bowed. For the sake of my children, when this has happened, I would just shut up and back off. But I kept my back straight and my head high when I did. I don't hate the adopters, and I am really no longer angry at them so much as I pity them their insecurities. I believe in civility, and respect is a two-way street. It might be hard to treat, with respect, the woman you throught of as a threat and a personal brood mare. But it can be done, and should be.

If I have any message for those who adopt, it would be that I did NOT give my children to you. I gave YOU to them because I had no other choice.

I also refuse to see myself as a part of any so-called "Triad." There is no equality in adoption and there are too many other players in the field to come up with a discernible, geometric representation of the experience. To me, it is nothing more than a great, big cluster F***...painful, confusing and damaging.

But, since I have reunited with my two adult children, I have finally mourned the forever loss of my babies. I have mourned the years we missed when birthday cards and calls and other things were impossible. I have come to terms with and have learned to direct and use my anger at the injustices done to us...Nmothers and Adopted. Those who say you don't make progress, don't try.

And yes, Birthdays are easier than they were, for me, anyhow.

Floods, Rugs and Reunions

2011-04-02T11:59:00.000-02:00

There are floods and there are Tsunamis and earthquakes. They all cause damage to homes and people. So does the separation of mother and infant. There is even good evidence that the stress of coercion and isolation and worry during pregnancy can cause life long problems for both the child and the mother. Like a flood, the water may eventually recede but the damage is done.

We have watched as the people of Japan try to pick up the pieces after a disaster of historical proportions. For some, still searching for missing family, the tides may return the bodies of their lost ones, but there will be no repairing them. There will be no joyful reunion for these people.

Anyone who has ever been inside a flood damaged home knows that much has to be discarded before it can be rebuilt and it will never be the way it was. Many an opportunistic business will try to convince you that if you use their product or call their service, it will all be just like new. That's not a reality where there has been a true disaster. Sometimes, when the waters soak the rugs and the walls, there is nothing to do but rip up the carpet, tear out the drywall and try to build up again or throw up one's hands and relocate to an area where the danger of such a catastrophe is lessened.

I watch as so many mothers and their adult, reunited children reach, hungrily, for some kind of normalcy in their relationships. It's not easy to do when there is so much damage that has been exacerbated by years of ignoring the waters that inundated the rooms of their perceptions, psyches and hearts.

Some folks, when flooded out, scrap the whole mess and build something different. I wonder if that is what we should do. We are more than mere friends. We share flesh, blood, DNA and the trauma of that separation. When we finally reconnect, we are familiar strangers...known but unknown..and it is awkward and emotionally draining on both ends, and hard work to find that place where we can be comfortable with each other.

It is a fact that many of us spend our time with each other walking on eggshells, careful of every word we say. Some of us suppress our true feelings and don't always respond with honesty for fear of chasing the other away. Using the flood analogy, we dry the walls as best we can, then throw on some primer and paint..cosmetically okay, but the rot is still in the walls.

From overly courteous to overtly hostile, these relationships run the gamut. Perhaps the best thing to do is to really scrap the whole thing and start from the ground up. We can't re-birth and re-raise our adult children and the regression so often seen where the adult adoptee goes back to being a wounded infant and we regress to the frightened, shamed and bullied girl can't make for a healthy relationship, especially if we lay that on each other.

Have you ever searched the racks, looking for a special occasion card for your reunited child or your Nmom and tried to find one that doesn't refer to shared experiences of a life spent together? That is what is missing. That is what cannot be repaired or renewed.

Here's a concept. What if, before we explored the relationship, we worked on those issues within ourselves with professionals, support groups, etc. and allowed those inner babies and girls to grow up along with the rest of our beings before attempting reunion? I know too many who have said, "had I only known......." The fact is that, when many of us entered reunion all those many years ago, we had no idea we had been in a flood. We counted on love and the excitement and drama of the event to carry us on into the future. WRONG.

Let's face it. The government isn't the one to do the healing and the Industry? Well that's laughable. To ask an adoption professional to help us heal is like asking the fox to look after the hens. They want us to just go away and shut up and they want our children to be good little life-long possessions and be properly "grateful." We have straight search groups. We have search support groups. We have support groups for reunited mothers and adoptees and for those in search. But we have no real, designated, pre-reunion support and information groups that are effective in helping those involved get off to a better start and how to anticipate and navigate the flood waters of old pain and confusion.

Right now, if you look at some of the forums where those in troubled reunions congregate, you'll find nothing more than a major, nasty bitch-fest. There is no progress...only spinning of wheels. Hostility is encouraged rather than explored and abated. I wonder how much of that fury and frustration comes from wanting something we just can't have?

The damage is done and the phenomenon of reunion has introduced a whole, new classification of parent/child relationships. Years, fears, secrets and lies have flooded the rooms of our emotions and psyches and, once the mess is cleaned out, then something new has to be built in its place. It is what it is.

I consider myself to be the only true mother to my surrendered children. I get a lot of flack for that but that is how I feel. That is why I use the term "adopters." That's my own, personal conviction. But I know that I was an absent mother for the first 30+ years of their lives and I understand, accept and respect the feelings they have for those who raised them. I just do not feel constrained to share those feelings. So I can't be Mother in the traditional sense and they can't be my children in the traditional sense. Like I said, the shared life experience isn't there. It was lost in the flood. But, maybe there can be a new class or type of the Mother/Child dyad born out of the simple need to connect and know.

So, perhaps we need to seek out this new model for the Reunited Mother and her Reunited Adult Child. Was our mistake always in trying to recapture what had already been damaged beyond repair? When all the flood has left is a foundation, then you build on that. I don't have any magic answers as to how, but I have a couple of ideas of my own..too late for me and many others, but maybe not for some of the younger members of the closed, secret adoption era. Don't have unrealistic expectations of each other and realize that you are starting from the ground up. I'm sure others might have wisdom to add to that.

Meanwhile, I have stopped trying to save the rug that was inundated with water, mud and worse. A shop-vac is not going to save it.

Who knows what we can build if we throw that rug away, tear out the soggy drywall and decide, together, how and what to build from the foundation?

Mother Non Grata

2011-03-28T13:10:00.003-02:00

She personifies the adjective "harmless" and "kindly." She simply and ingeniously expresses her love and her pain to those who take the time to listen and understand. She's never really done anything to hurt anyone. Her only "crime" is a non-crime. She gave birth, was unmarried and was coerced into surrendering her son during the Era of Mass Surrenders. She knows, now, who and where he is. But he wants nothing to do with her.

She doesn't want much...just a chance to look at him, a hug, some conversation. Her heart is full of love for him but it is now couched in the pain of his rejection of her. She is treated like a threat..this bright senior, who walks with a cane. She wonders how he might explain to the police if they were called to remove her from his doorstep. "Officer, this woman is stalking me?" Yeah, that is one dangerous granny, there, Fella. This is my dear friend and she hurts in her heart.

She has lost her child and that child's children and generations that will come. Would it hurt him to make those tiny concessions....to send her an occasional "Hi, How are you?" Who would he be betraying? His adopters might be putting pressure on him. He might be holding his anger to him like a toddler holds on to a blankie. As toxic as that misguided anger is, it is the devil he knows. To let go of that resentment, and to honor this woman's place in his life is a proposition that must terrify him. Anger is a surface emotion. Scratch it, and you usually find fear and sadness.

She still hopes and prays that he will give her a chance to see him, just once, to explain what happened, to let him know he was and is loved. Maybe that is what he is fearing. That the lies about the careless and uncaring beemommy will come tumbling down around him and the truth will put its light to the dark and unreasoning things he has been told or has imagined and made real. I fear he might wait to see that light until it is too late.

I've heard, directly from the mothers, of many such cases. Mothers aren't the only ones who reject. Even those of us with relationships often get reminded of how secondary we are in the lives of our adult children. When you are told, "you only gave birth to me," or "it was meant to be that I was adopted by my (adopters)," when you are treated as nothing more than a repository for medical information and are not even allowed to attend important events in your adult child's life, you know you are being punished. Because, because, because...no matter what kind of papers we did or didn't sign...we became MOTHERS when we gave birth to you. We've been slapped in the face enough for one lifetime, don't you think?

I think that some are dismayed to find that we are not sluts, crack whores or deviants. There is the occasional exception that proves the rule, but the majority of us are accomplished, educated, some of us married, grandmothers with talents and self-respect. My daughter told me, when we reunited, that "it was okay" if I didn't know who her father was. WTF?? I know of another mother who is at the "it is what it is" stage who was told by her adult child that it would have been easier for her if Mom had turned out to be a drug-addicted prostitute or words to that effect. The stereotype of the surrendering mother doesn't help us a bit. I would hope that our adult children would love having a natural mother they can respect. We are not that kind of person now, and we weren't then.

Most of us understand that our children are going to feel love and loyalty for the people who raised them. But I can remember someone saying to me, about 17 years ago, "If a mother can love more than one child, why can't a child love more than one mother?" I dunno about that one. Usually we are all allotted only one mother and, if your family is like the majority, you had to share her with siblings. I wonder if sibling rivalry is all about fighting for the parents' attention? That has to be a part of it.

But I digress...or maybe not. I have also seen many an adult, who was adopted as an infant, resent the fact that the Natural Mother went on with making some kind of life for herself. It matters not to them that we carried the loss and the grief with us for the lifetime of that surrendered child. What matters is that they seem to often see us as, somehow, undeserving of any kind of life if we "abandoned" them. How dare we have other children? How dare we love those other children? How dare we laugh or love?

Not all the angriest adoptees are the ones who are rejected by their Natural Mothers. There are many who are wanted, welcomed, searched for and loved who just want that woman to bow, scrape, beg forgiveness and rot in solitude or, at the very least, sit in the back of the bus and only come forth when invited and then, the head must be properly bowed. In many cases, she is either pulled forward and pushed away at the same time, or else she is cut off, entirely. She is a non-presence in their lives. These are the ones who need to do a reality check and grow up, quickly, before their brain sets up like cement.

So rejection is a double-edged sword. It cuts both ways and leaves wounds on the mother every bit as often and as deep as those on the adult child. It's funny in that the adoptee rejects the mother because of all the lies they were told. The mother rejects the adoptee because of all the lies she has told herself. Either situation is dysfunctional and unfair to all involved.

To these adult children of surrendering mothers and to the mothers who live their own lies....it's time to grow up, gear up and face the truths and accept the love. There are a lot of us moms who don't have a whole lot of time left.

A Word To Cowards and Other Rejecting Mothers

2011-03-27T11:41:00.000-02:00

I just read a blog by Real Daughter that brought me to tears like few blog posts have ever done. I have felt this way in the past about my sisters who live in their fear and shame and trauma without ever searching for a better way. When they do that, their adult, surrendered children are the ones who suffer from their mother's trauma as well as their own. I want to take these Nmoms by the shoulders and shake them until their teeth rattle.

I have watched this spirited woman as she made the journey from the possession of her adopters and the object of rejection by her Nmother to a person, whole within herself. When we make that journey, we don't find perfection, but we do usually find a nice person, no worse and no better than anyone else, with whom we can live. I wonder, if I had not made that hard journey to self-acceptance prior to reunion, would I have been one of the mothers who rejects? I know that the burden of grief, guilt, shame and fear was with me for a long time until I got sick and damn tired of carrying it. I hate it that some mothers hide within the depths of that burden, content to continue sitting in their safe, warm pile of shit and ignoring the smell.

I have preached a lot, to adopted adults, about understanding their Nmoms and letting go of the blame and hate...about not tarring all of us with the same brush, and trying to put themselves in our shoes. If we don't do the same in return, we can't really call ourselves mothers. No, I still won't accept the "abandoner" crap or the "I hate all Nmoms because of mine," mindset. But I do understand it a lot better. Fortunately, this particular adoptee sees personal growth as positive and has the courage to pursue it. "Nuff said on that side.

Now! To those recalcitrant and cowardly mothers, WOMAN UP!! This is the child of your body. The past is gone. It can't hurt you anymore. If your near and dear are condemning of the fact that you surrendered a child, then their love must come with some pretty harsh conditions. If you have kept a secret for all those years, the truth will set you free, literally! Reunion isn't an easy road to travel, but those that do usually don't regret it.

Your baby is gone, forever, but he/she didn't die. That adult, standing in front of you with their hand stretched out to you is your new reality. How can you not enjoy the resemblance and wonder at the synchronicities? You still carry cells of that person inside you. Your DNA is in every one of their cells, bone, blood and sinew. They need answers, and, whether you will admit it or not or even know it, SO DO YOU! What can it hurt for you to make a new friend? And what better friend to have that the blood of your blood?

I wish there weren't so many of you out there. You damage our image and put barriers between people that don't even know you by your coldness. Your fear is misplaced and your shame is in your head, only. To quote a book that helped me immensely, when you grow and accept yourself, "...you will neither regret the past nor wish to turn your back on it." There lies the way of sanity.

I hope some of you read this. I hope you might want to have some dialogue with mothers who accepted and even searched for their adult children. We can tell you that the fear goes away. The suppressed grief does surface but it was doing you no good down there where you had buried it. You can go through it with support you didn't have back then. Yes, you might find some anger emerging, but anger is just an emotion. It's what you do with it that is the important thing. And, for me at least, the best part is saying goodbye to that stupid, frakking scarlet letter of shame. We never deserved it. C'mon...grow a set of cast iron ovaries and meet your adult child halfway.

You might learn something. I can't promise that it won't hurt, but it can, most definitely, help heal.

(We'll talk about the adult adoptees who reject their Nmoms on another day.)

Open Records for Mothers, Too! Why....?

2011-03-22T20:18:00.000-02:00

Intrinsic; in·trin·sic; Adjective /inˈtrinzik/ /-sik/ inherent; 1.Belonging naturally; essential

Esoteric; es·o·ter·ic; Adjective /ˌesəˈterik/ 1.Intended for or likely to be understood by only a small number of people with a specialized knowledge or interest in a subject or issue.
Egalitarian; e·gal·i·tar·i·an ;Adjective /iˌgaləˈterēən/; 1.Of, relating to, or believing in the principle that all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities.

Dignity; dig·ni·ty: Noun /ˈdignitē/; (dignities plural);1.The state or quality of being worthy of honor or respect.

Anyone who reads my blog knows that I am not big on long, dry recitations of legal prescedents, dates and data. There are those who are much better at that sort of thing than I am. I tend to follow what I know, in my deepest self, to be true and right and extrapolate from there. If I have managed to pick up pertinent data and can readily access it, I will include it. But rambling through the history of this arena of activism is not my bag. If I have an idea, I'll put it out there. If someone says it can't be done, I'll ask why. If the reasons are sound, I'll look for another avenue to the goals I want to pursue.

The question was raised, on First Mother Forum , of whether Natural Mothers should also be granted access to the amended birth certificate of their surrendered, adult child. I firmly believe it is fair and right and that we should be granted equal access to all records pertaining to our surrender, labor, delivery and our child's adoptive name. The Original Birth Certificate gives identifying information about the Natural Mother. Why shouldn't a Natural Mother have identifying information on her adult child?

It has more to do with those words up there than with the possibility of reunion, although I think that the right to know who your child is and how that child has fared is our right based on a primal need. Not everyone went through what I and many other mothers did during the EMS. But a huge number did. So many of us had all our autonomy, our self respect and our very worlds taken from us, along with our child. We were secreted away, shamed and went through our pregnancies in atmospheres of punishment and censure.

When the search phenomenon began, we either started looking, ourselves, or filed our names with registries and waited and hoped. Others hunched their shoulders and hid themselves even deeper in the personas they had generated for themselves out of old, entrenched fear and shame, I am sorry to say. Many of us who lost our self-respect fought hard battles to regain it and still managed to stay honest about our pasts. The freedom and lightness of being brought about by simply telling the truth was heady stuff.

But for me, reunion, and knowing aren't enough. How we are and were seen and treated by society is also important. We've been the bad girls/delinquents long enough and I, for one, am terribly tired of it. I don't care how much hostility flows my way from adoption facilitators, attorneys and adopters. You used me and my sister mothers in the worst way and then we were discarded. Well, guess what? We are still here. And we are no longer helpless, young, dependent girls afraid of an intolerant society.

So, I can't quote the legal and constitutional reasons, former legal battles fought, and their outcomes to explain my strong belief that Mothers should be included in the fight for open records. But I can say that it is intrinsically the right thing to do. We have the esoteric understanding and involvement that places us in midst of those concerned with these rights. And to do so will open the door to true egalitarianism in the adoption activism milleu and allow us all our dignity. That might not be backed up with all the data, but I believe we definitely should have access.

More than that, I believe we deserve it. Sometimes, it's just a matter of what is right.

That Was The Week That Was

2011-03-21T11:17:00.001-02:00

I have spent the past 10 days in a speechless state of horror, inspiration, heartache and renewed faith in humanity. We watched our former enemies from 65 years ago, now our friends and allies, as their nation was dealt blow after blow from the uneasy earth that lies beneath our feet.

I watched people who had lost families, homes and all their possessions reaching out to their neighbors, joining the rescue and recovery operations, whittling chopsticks and sharing what little they had with others. I watched brave people risking their lives trying to corral a nuclear monster before it could escape and wreak even more havoc than has already occurred.

One of the most poignant images, one I can't help but hold in my mind, is that of people desperately searching message boards in shelters,searching for the names of missing family members. Husbands, wives, children, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins...each, it seems, had someone searching for them except in that most horrible case where entire families were taken by the waters.

If ever the importance of blood kin was demonstrated, it was here, in this stricken nation with its stalwart people. NO ONE who has survived, so far, has been left behind or deemed less important than another. There has been no looting, no violence. There has been unbelievable courage, patience and charity. Stripped down to less than the bare essentials, people shared their fires, their blankets, what little rice they had and waited for help. And the joy on the faces of those who found their family members alive was transcendent. I shed tears of joy along with them.

It might be interesting to note that Japan, the third largest economy in the world, does NOT have an "adoption society." They take care of their own and family members see after their own flesh and blood when the need arises. I have already seen where salivating American PAPs are asking about orphaned, Japanese infants and toddlers. Not so fast, there, wannabes. The Japanese will FIRST make sure that every effort is made to find blood relatives of any child before they make any other moves. And they are not too keen on the idea of their children leaving their culture and home.

As winter passes and the fruit trees bloom, I am thinking of the reality of human need for the ties of blood. You can graft a limb from one orange tree onto another and that limb will still produce the kind of fruit from the tree from which it was taken. You cannot graft a baby onto another family and have it develop the traits of the adopters. I also know that the soil of Florida will not grow a cherry tree taken from Michigan. The tree will be stunted and the fruit sparse and of lower quality.

The Japanese people, like all other people, are not perfect. History boldly notes their mistakes. But when it comes to family and what constitutes a family and community, they have something in their culture that we would be wise to emulate.

So, as the bombs fall on Libya, and as the political and economic situations elsewhere roil and seethe, the people of Japan will mourn their lost, rejoice in their found and rebuild their lives.

And the blood family in the land of the rising sun will survive.

PS: This recent article had to be added to this post. Japan says "no thank you" to PAPs. YAY!!!

Logic 101

2011-03-12T11:51:00.003-02:00

Today, we will have a short review of simple facts that should be common knowledge but are not, due to the way the adoption industry, greedy agencies, PAPs and their government toadies have of twisting things. Here goes another attempt to replace mythology with reality.

FACT: Being unmarried and/or young and/or financially dependent and/or still in the process of getting an education does not make any woman or girl less a real mother.

FACT: If a young lady is old enough to have a baby, she is old enough to be called a Mother. Babies do not have babies. At age 14 and up, our bodies are the bodies of women capable of fertility, passion and all the other things parents don't like to admit exist.

FACT: Antiquated religious beliefs and reactionary social mores have criminalized the act of love and the birth of a child outside the man-made institute of marriage.

FACT: Illegitimacy is a man-made concept for the benefit of the patriarchy and really has nothing to do with an innocent child or the marital status of that child's mother. Every child has a right to be here, whether the name he/she bears is the mother's or the father's.

FACT: Adult Natural Mothers and Adopted people can handle the same rights as everyone else and the freedom of association that will allow us to pursue or not pursue relationships as we choose.

FACT: Natural Mothers and Adult Adoptees do not need self-appointed spokespeople...especially from those who support the adoption industry.

FACT: Most Natural Mothers are NOT fragile flowers needing protection, anonymity or avuncular concern from institutes and organizations.

FACT: While we might disagree among ourselves on certain points, we all agree that closed records are a violation of our human rights.

FACT: It would cost less to help a new mother and her child than it takes to supply adopters with subsidies. A hand up is different from a hand out.

FACT: Coercion, conditioning and social mythology that bring about surrender are real problems that can only be solved by massive doses of truth.

FACT: If you accept your adult child/natural mother into your life, openly, your nose won't fall off and the world won't stop turning.

FACT: Blood ties DO matter.

FACT: NO ONE is entitled to the child of another woman by "virtue" of infertility.

FACT: The major causes of infertility are delayed childbearing, STDs, obesity, smoking and other lifestyle choices.

FACT: There is no such thing as a "Triad" in adoption. Natural Mothers and Adoptees have no power or equality. That commodity belongs to the agencies, brokers, adopters, workers and others who profit or benefit from our loss.

FACT: Those who adopt are not perfect saints nor or they better people than the majority of natural mothers.

FACT: Too many people don't want to accept or even know these simple, true facts.

FACT: It seems everyone who is not directly connected to adoption "knows someone" who adopted or who was adopted or surrendered a child who is just deliriously happy about it all.

*sigh

The Death Of Women's Rights In America

2011-03-10T21:21:00.000-02:00

Grab your burkhas, Ladies, and get ready to walk 6 paces behind your man. The reproductive rights of American women are becoming the province of fanatical patriarchs and the Devil no longer wears Prada..He wears Armani.

For every step forward women have taken in the US in the arenas of business, politics, education and the arts in the last century, there are Good Old Boys intent on taking us back to the Middle Ages in matters of sex and childbearing. For those of us whose fertile years are behind us, there is little threat. It is for my daughters, granddaughter and great granddaughter that I am raising the alarm.

There have been those who said that the Tea Party/ Rigid Right/ Christian Fundamentalist contingent are trying to take us back to the 1950's. I contend that the direction is more towards the Dark Ages when women were chattel and Theologians debated the existence of a soul in women. In states across the nation, the right to choose is being eroded by the arrogant and those who want their votes.

Abstinence only is still being preached, even though it is NOT effective and even foolish in concept. Virginity in a woman is a prize and the one getting the prize is not chastised for HIS sexual escapades unless he occupies an elected office. Tinkerbell, Barbie and other little girl heroines are being tarted out to the max. Little girls wear extensions, makeup and prance across a stage teaching them that their worth is in their looks and the use of them. Brittney, Miley, Lindsey, Christine, Beyonce and that audacious Gaga person are the role models for our female youth.

All this creates a perfect atmosphere for the Big Business of adoption. Just think of all those healthy infants being taken from women who are seen as nothing more than glorified breeders. Women who put childbearing on hold and made poor choices that led to infertility will be salivating. (As an aside, there was a story about pregnant women with cancer that noted one of the reasons this was increasing was due to the fact that women were putting off pregnancy until later in life.) The Industry will be opening maternity homes and adoption agencies on every street corner. Hallelujah and pass the court orders!

Here are just a few of the reasons I make this observation:

(1) A GA state representative introduces legislation that would make it mandatory that every miscarriage be investigated and murder charges brought, not excluding the death penalty, if the miscarriage can be traced to any action or lack of action on the part of the mother.
(2) South Dakota comes up with legislation that would reduce the penalty for killing an abortion provider.
(3) States across the nation are being deluged with legislation from the GOP and Tea Party office-holders to restrict the time period during while a woman can seek a legal, medical abortion.
(4)Legislation is introduced requiring a woman to have an ultra-sound done of her weeks-old pregnancy and shown or told the results. This is seen as a deterrent.
(5)Legislation is introduced requiring that a woman seek out and be counseled by "Crisis Pregnancy Centers" before she seeks a safe and legal medical termination. She will be encouraged to carry to term and surrender her child for adoption.
(6)The Republicans want to narrow down the definition of “rape” – by eliminating rape cases involving excessive amount of alcohol or drugs, date rape, and statutory rape, among others (basically, they’re saying: if a woman doesn’t look physically beaten, it wasn’t rape). They’re trying to do this by only counting “forcible rape” as “real rape.” This means women whose rape charges don’t fall under this vague category of “forcible rape” will not be eligible for financial support from the federal government when it comes to abortions. They even suggest that women who are raped not be called "victims."
(7)An OB/GYN in Florida had, a woman who refused bed rest after threatening a miscarriage, committed to the hospital. She had other children to support and a job to hold onto. It wasn't long after that the fetus, already deceased, was delivered by emergency C Section. This one is in the FL Supreme court at this time.

The list is longer than this, but this is enough, I would think, to make any intelligent and competent woman really worry about our future. The sad thing is that I doubt that any of the adherents of the views listed above will even see, if they read this list, how medieval, how oppressive, how patronizing and how ridiculous it reads. I wouldn't put it past them to try to bring back chastity belts for women.

We who managed to benefit, in part from some of the forward movement in the last decade are watching future generations losing all the ground that was gained and then some. We are aging and the huge number of Baby Boomers are more interested in holding on to what's left of their 401Ks and IRAs. I know that I have to turn the television off, divert my attention from the news feeds and retreat into my own life in order to sleep at night.

Yes, I know that I blogged about this two posts back. But I am more alarmed now than when I posted about this the first time. If anyone knows something we can do, who we can talk to, who can help divert this horrendous trend, please speak out. I have sent emails to all my elected officials and to a few that have nothing to do with my district. I am blogging. I am signing petitions. I am noting these things on my Facebook page.

And I have never felt so helpless in my life except when I lost my children to adoption. I don't want to go back there. This kind of thing happens in third world countries...not in my Land of the Free.

They must have really meant it when they said that "all MEN are created equal."

Just Sayin', You Know?

2011-03-10T14:22:00.001-02:00

This is a news story from KKTV in southern Colorado. This is also one, gigantic OOPS, for the CPS, adoption and all concerned. The problem is, two little boys had to suffer while people fiddled around, doing nothing and remained blissfully unaware. Two little boys, both adopted by this couple, were recently discovered to be missing. The problem is that they have been missing for more than a decade. How in the Hell did this go undiscovered for so long?

Austin and Edward Bryant seem to have gone missing around the first part of the last decade and it was never reported by their adopters, according to this report:

"Austin and Edward are the adoptive children of 58-year-old Edward Bryant and 54-year-old Linda Bryant, of Texas. Deputies tell us the Bryants lived in a home located on Granite Circle in Monument from 1999 to 2005. Property records show they owned the home at 18060 Granite Circle from 1999 to 2006.

"I don't really remember them, but they seemed like shady people. Something just wasn't quite right," said one neighbor.

Linda and Edward Bryant have been contacted and arrested in Texas for receiving an ongoing financial subsidy from the El Paso County Department of Human Services despite the fact Austin and Edward were not residing with them. They have been extradited to back to Colorado and are in custody at the El Paso County Criminal Justice Center. "

Once again, we are shown that adopters are not saints and that they put their knickers on, one leg at a time, just like the rest of us lowly natural parents. They are just as prone to abuse and worse (maybe more prone if you take into account the lack of a blood connection) as anyone else.

But the real problem, to me, is that they went uninvestigated, still making money as if these boys were with them, for so long. I'm just saying, if this had been natural parents whose children went missing, they would have been jailed, judged and juried in a heartbeat, guilty or not. The scales are definitely not balanced when it comes to our misguided national love affair with adoption.

This also makes one question the fairness and wisdom of the adoption subsidy. We natural parents are lucky to get a tax deduction on our raised children. Why should someone receive money for adopting? I thought they wanted a child "as if born to." Subsidies do not fill that description one bit. To say that money is not a consideration in many areas of adoption is to be blind to the realities.

I am waiting to see if this receives national attention and if these children are ever found. The least crime of which the Bryants would be guilty would be fraud. The worst would be murder of the most foul variety. It breaks my heart that these kids not only went missing, but were used as income for such a long time as if their presence or absence meant less than nothing.

For the sake of Austin and Edward, I want some answers, Mr. and Mrs. Bryant. It's past time to come clean.

(You can read more about this in the El Paso Times.)

Urgent Bulletin! Women's Rights Declared An Oxymoron!

2011-03-09T12:17:00.001-02:00

Freakin' film at 11:00! The right of a woman to choose her own reproductive options is being eroded, state by state and woman by woman, by the self-righteous and arrogant among us. It's all over CNN, MSNBC and HNN as well as the network news programs and the print and Internet media. It's reported on TV in quick sound bites but it's there.

In South Dakota, they want to encourage the murder of abortion providers by lessening the penalty for the crime. Others want to force women to visit mis-named "Crisis Pregnancy Centers" before allowing her to seek a safe, medical termination. Texas legislators are pushing a requirement for any woman seeking termination to be subjected to an ultrasound and listen to a description of what is on the screen. Laws are being considered and passed, in a multitude of states, limiting the time period during which a woman can seek termination. Some leggies with beans for brains want to have a murder investigation every time a woman miscarries.

And, get this, an OB/GYN had a working mother with a risky pregnancy COMMITTED because she could not put her job on hold for bed rest. How dare she make that decision herself? Hmmm? And who says doctors don't have god complexes? That is being fought out in the Florida high court at this time.

Just go the the Planned Parenthood Facebook page or website. You can read all about the assaults made against a woman's right to determine her own reproductive life. With the passage of health care provisions that would not allow compensation for termination procedures, our nation is taking a giant step BACKWARDS, people!! And don't even get me started on the dim bulb legislator who wants to re-define rape. "Naw, judge. She wasn't raped. There's not a mark on her." So, if the guy only uses superior strength, threats and coercion, then it's just peachy to ignore the fact that she said "no?"

You might wonder what a piece about pro-choice is doing on a blog that deals with surrender and adoption, but reproductive rights covers more than birth control or abortion. It also should include the right for a woman to choose to raise her own child regardless of marital status, education or income. The erosion of the hard-won rights to access to effective birth control and safe, legal, medical termination of pregnancy bodes ill for all of us. Women are disrespected and under attack, by the conservative faction in our government and the adoption industry, who operates, unfortunately, with the aid of other women. Setting us against our own seems to work for them.

If we don't stand up for ourselves now, then the future looks bleak for our daughters, granddaughters and succeeding generations. The future in the patriarchal, puritanical US could be a nightmare filled with Stepford Wives and Handmaids if we don't divert this current trend. I don't think we can count on the National Organization for Women (excluding those with adoptable newborns) to offer across-the-board advocation.

If anyone looks closely, they can see the tie-in here between the erosion of reproductive rights and the adoption industry. When women are forced to carry a pregnancy to term, when young people are given no access to any kind of birth control save abstinence and when a woman is stripped of all her reproductive autonomy, then the adopter raptors and their suppliers start salivating over all those healthy infants. Talk about kids in a candy store!!

To me, the American obsession with controlling sexuality and reproduction for profit is comparable to our national addiction to petroleum products. There are alternatives and better ways, but the Good Old Boys Club is not going to allow it without turning some screws on some vulnerable people. The middle class, the poor and the disenfranchised will still be the targets of the powerful and wealthy and women will still be the targets of the covetous and controlling....UNLESS we fight back.

If we can stand together for the rights of each woman to choose her own path, if we can put a stop to the arrogant who would profit from our misery and loss, then there will be true equality and autonomy in the US.

Until then, it's just a nice dream.

Put A Plug In Pertman

2011-03-08T11:38:00.000-02:00

Adam, Adam, Adam. Once again, the talking head of the adoption-pushing Evan B. Donaldson Institute is speaking for those who are perfectly capable of speaking for themselves. I am so glad to know that adoptees are as fed up with this nonsense as we Nmoms are. Dammit, we are adults and we can speak for ourselves.

I was especially interested to read Mike Doughney's Blog on the subject. Baby Love Child has also entreated Pertman to shut his pie hole and let the adopted adult speak for themselves after his patronizing piece in the Huffington Post. What? Adoptees are citizens, too?? Thank you, Mr. P. We, of course, were too stupid to know that...NOT.

We Nmoms have been screaming at these self-ordained puppet masters to let us speak for ourselves for a few years, now. Mr. Pertman is an adopter. The EBDI was born from the dubious environs of the Spence-Chapin adoption agency. ANY adoption-promoting or adoption-friendly entity that presumes to speak for the Natural Mothers OR adult adoptees, especially on the issue of open records, is bogus in its actions and questionable in its motives.

There are those who have said that adopters are needed in the fight for open records. I question that. I think that WE are needed much more than the ones who benefited from the closed records from the get-go. We are the ones who were divested of our infants and kicked to the curb, enjoined to be silent and told our children would never need us or want to know us. We are the ones who were fed specious, vicious lies such as, "you will have other children and that will take away the pain," and "you will make a life for yourself and forget." SOMEBODY, both then and now, doesn't know shite from Shinola about motherhood.

So to see the very Industry and those who benefited from our loss, writing op-ed pieces, publishing "reports" and otherwise putting words in the mouths of many very intelligent and capable women and their adult children is infuriating. They managed to intimidate Nmoms into silence for a couple of decades, but no more. Shame, lies, convoluted "reasoning" and patronization no longer work. The condescending nature of this activity does not win Nmom friends and influence adoptees. It just pisses us off, mightily.

Yeah, I know I have posted about this in the past. I will probably post about it again and again. As long as these institutes and agencies and lobbyists and their minions and sheep continue to try to wrap a simple human right in pages of double-speak both punitive and nannyish (I coined a word!), as long as adopters and agents try to tell us what we think and how we feel, there will be a need for us to retaliate with a simple phrase; "Adam and Friends, Shut the F*** up and let us speak for ourselves!!"

I am delighted to see more adopted adults and Nmothers becoming disgruntled and protesting this sham. No one can talk with authority about that which they have not experienced in this arena. Mothers know how we feel and think and what we want. Adult adoptees know their own minds as well.

The Industry and those who are its beneficiaries are managing to keep the proponents of open records at each other's necks with a lot of their blather. Well-meaning people are walking down Primrose Paths to advocate legislation that won't stand up to a Supreme Court challenge and place restrictions on the seekers and the sought.

So our message is simple...probably too simple for the talking heads to understand. Open all identifying records to the adopted and mothers and let us take care of the other decisions, ourselves like the grownups we are.

Oh, and to our children and sister mothers...don't forget to bring pictures!

Medical Records My Arse!

2011-03-07T16:02:00.000-02:00

While I watch myself, my adult children and the other natural mothers and adult adoptees in reunion around me, the brandishing of medical records as the raison d'etre for the drive for open records goes on. It is so amusing to note that, when contact is finally made, medical history is NOT the first question or topic that arises.

I am not saying that a medical history is not important. I am saying that, in my opinion, it is a smoke screen created to protect adopters' feelings. I also suspect it is a good come back when an adult adopted person is accused of being ungrateful and disloyal. Unfortunately, they get a lot of that. The fact that few raised family members have all their answers and that personal medical information is protected by the HIPAA regulations seems to have escaped those who argue that family medical history is their main objective and should be mandatory.

Now, having asked a number of my adopted friends and observing the reunions in my family and around me with my friends, I can say that the most important question they want answered is "Who is my Natural Mother?" The next question is all about the Why? It's about the circumstances of their birth and surrender. Then, they want to know about the Natural Father and any siblings. They want to know why they love art while their adopters love science and from whom their auburn hair and brown eyes came. THEN medical questions will arise. That is when we all find out that lots of us know very little past our parents' ailments, etc. In other words, we are not filled with generations of biological lore concerning our genetic deficiencies.

When that first face to face meeting occurs, do you know what the vast majority brings with them, on both ends? Pictures! We are hungry for images of our children as they grew up and our children are equally hungry to view the faces that look like them. It is about a Mother's need to know how her child fared and an adult adoptee's need for identity. You don't see us greeting each other with our medical files in hand.

I remember putting up banners and balloons and having cake, champagne and deli platters ready and a list of my ailments, and my parent's was the last thing on our minds. It came up much later and I gave them what I knew and what affected them. Any other personal information remained just that...personal. If I don't tell my raised children everything or my reunited children everything, who thinks I am going to sit still for the state requiring everything? Let's get real. Just as we all have the constitutional right to free association and can approach anyone we wish, with courtesy, about forming a relationship, we also have the same right to privacy that EVERY citizen enjoys, including adoptees. Some things are just no one's business but our own.

In reference to that fact, it has happened that many adoptees, for whatever reasons, have denied contact to their Natural Mothers. There are many mothers with broken hearts who talk about their hurt on private groups online. I'd say that there were just about as many of them as there are rejected adoptees. They might want to pass on medical information, but most of them just want to see and hold their adult child, just once, and know that they are OK. Some of us have suffered some rather nasty treatment at the hands of our adult children. Why it is assumed that we are less human and less deserving of courtesy and respect is beyond me. I just know I don't sit and accept it...not from mine or from anyone else's.

The smoke and mirrors that the Industry and pro-adoption factions are using to obscure and deny the real reason behind the demand for open access to the Original Birth Certificate is causing a battle of sorts between some of the adoptees and Nmoms. This is just what the NCFA and the EBDI and the agencies want. If we are attacking and defending, then we are distracted from them carrying on business as usual. Mandatory medical histories are just part of another illusion performed with razzle-dazzle and sleight of hand. I wonder how many of them have realized that the amended birth certificate and the adoption practices of, especially, the EMS are legalized crimes? Call it what you will, the amended birth certificate is a fraudulent document, a fake.

I am so hoping that, as adopted people and Nmoms start working together more, that the veils will be lifted and the distracting ruffles and flourishes cut away to reveal the simple truth of the objective.

Let us all, mothers and adoptees, know WHO. We'll take it from there.

Mother...More Than A Name

2011-03-02T11:58:00.000-02:00

In having discussions with my own reunited children and other adult adopted people, especially those whose Natural Mothers were less than welcoming and loving, I have seen a truth that lays in my stomach like jagged rocks. Rejection from either end is a singular type of pain. These people hurt for real. That pain cannot be ignored or dismissed.

I have characterized, on occasion, some adoptees as being "needy." Well, OF COURSE THEY ARE!! The first lessons a child learns of lovability, worth and acceptance are learned in the arms of his/her real mother. Deprived of that and then placed into the arms of a literal stranger who doesn't feel, smell or sound 'right,' then the first message that child receives is garbled and confusing, no matter how kind and loving the adopters.

The problem is in finding our way when we reunite as adults. It's to late to undo what was done. And I have learned that all the love and acceptance in one's capacity to give is not enough to heal either party. When a Natural Mother, steeped in fear of reliving the old pain, still feeling the shame, old tapes playing in her head and old lies heavy on her heart..when she closes the door to her adult child, the problem is often compounded, tenfold. She gets no healing and her child is further hurt. Unfortunately, we all, mothers, adoptees, John and Jane Doe on the street, have the constitutional right to decide with whom we will or will not associate. Right or wrong, fair or unfair, that's the way it is. One person's rights end where another's begins. That doesn't change the fact that rejection hurts.

A lot of these mothers don't seem to be able to separate the person of her child from the trauma of the experience. That seems to be true with a lot of women who were raped or were the victims of incest. How I got past that feeling with my son, I don't know, but I managed to separate his existence from his conception while he was still in my womb. I think I just needed and wanted a child so very much after losing my daughter...but I was not allowed to keep him, either.

If the adopted adult is already feeling anger, bitterness, and has been given or invented and imagined false and demeaning information about the mother and is then rejected, "Katy, bar the door!" That anger is so virulent it spills over onto the mothers of other adopted people and we fight back. If their experience with their adopters and adoptive family was painful, we have a wounded tiger. Underneath all this, is an aching sadness that is only thinly disguised by the anger. I have learned that anger is, more often than not, only a surface emotion and that there are layers and layers of sadness, confusion, fear and other emotions underneath the surface turmoil.

Even if accepted, if an adopted adult is in that "testing" stage where they want to manipulate their mother into proving her love and fixing them, and the mother backs away, responding to the simple instinct of self-preservation, then they can let the Hounds of Hell loose upon ALL mothers. It's not right but it is human nature. The thorns prick us all. Even good reunions have bad moments.

Quite an few of us Natural Mothers have made, and rightly so, the statement that we are only mothers to our own surrendered children. We will not bear or accept the punishments and blandishments meant for the rejecting mothers. We will not be referred to as breeders, birthers, abandoners, bio-abandoners, or egg donors and it is not our responsibility to make up to the adult child of another woman for the shortcomings of their particular Natural Mother. We do not stereotype you...don't stereotype us and don't judge us all by your situation.

Having said that, again, clearly, I have to admit that my heart hurts for a lot of these people who feel they need that maternal affirmation/acceptance in order to be whole. Were it possible, I would be mother to them all. I would gather them all in my arms and sing lullabies and give love and do all in my power to take away the hurt. And it would all be in vain. I am not their mother. I am only mother to my own children.

I was watching on one of the science channels the other night, a program that was examining the mysteries of the Universe. They were talking about how all of the things that make life possible on this planet came from the stars, comets, nebulae, etc. We are all made of the stuff of stars. Break us down into our basic chemical components and you will find those same elements in asteroids, meteors and even hot, burning suns. Inside each of us is a completeness that we must look inward to find.

It is good to have others in our lives, to have loved ones who see us as important and need us. But it is more important to accept and love ourselves and find what we need within us. The mother bird pushes the chick from the nest and says, "Fly...go be a bird." Parents age and die. How could any of us go on if we haven't realized our own right to be here? If we remain dependent on others for our emotional needs, then we die of emotional starvation when a feast is available within our own beings.

A lot of people see the "Desiderata" (Max Erhmann; 1927) as trite and overly simple. But there is one passage in this well-known piece that I carry with me at all times. It helped me through my own dark wanderings. "Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should."

So, as children of the Cosmos, we are all bound to each other in a kinship that surpasses the mundane. To my adopted friends, look at your tummy and observe your navel. It proves that you came into this world through the same passage way we all traveled. You have a right to know WHO, you have a right to seek out other adult, natural family members to ask your questions and you have a right to be happy with who you are, as you are.

You have a right to be here.

They're All Alike...Aren't They??

2011-02-28T16:36:00.000-02:00

I went through a period in my life when I pretty much judged all men by one standard. In my mind, they were all out for one thing only, incapable of fidelity and emotionally immature. I was pretty darn smug in my biased wisdom as I tarred each and every male with the same brush. After all, I had learned my lesson about the opposite gender through hard and painful experience. With a flick of my wrist and a twisted grin, I would proclaim, loudly, that "Men are all alike."

Was that fair of me or even accurate? NO. I was guilty of what I call "Center of the World Syndrome." If it was true for me, it was true for everyone. My experience with men, save my grandfather and a favorite uncle, was hurtful and traumatic. I obviously had a lot of maturing to do and I don't wonder that my first marriage was not very successful. While I don't think it was all my fault, I am sure that my attitude towards men didn't help anything. Thank goodness I finally stopped calling all equines mules and got to know men as individuals. I have a wonderful husband and some terrific male friends and my sons are terrific.

It's unfortunate that some seem to see ALL Natural Mothers based on their own negative experiences with their own. I can understand the frustration, anger and hurt that an adoptee experiences when their mothers are too frightened, ashamed or too indoctrinated by the adoption myth to be open to their surrendered children. I don't blame them for telling it like it is FOR THEM. But we are not all alike any more than all adopted people are identical. We don't hold a set of magic keys to open all the doors to all their mysteries, but most of us welcome our reunited children and do our best. Some of us even searched for our children.

When making a statement about something an Nmom has done that is unfair or unkind, I think it's important to make it clear that it is that one particular mother who is being cited. When you say "Mothers," it indicts us all. Being surprised or resentful when we object is ignoring the obvious. When we ask that you don't say this about all of us, that isn't an attack. It's simply a reasonable request based on fairness and logic.

Now, I want to address one issue in particular and that's the idea recently put forth that we think, because we gave birth, that we can control all our children into adulthood. Nothing is further from the truth. Were I to try to tell my adult, raised children that they couldn't associate with their surrendered siblings, they would laugh out loud. I have not had that kind of "control" since they were 13. True, there might be the rare controlling matriarch among us who tries, but I doubt if she would meet with a lot of success. On the other hand, there have been any number of Adopters who have issued just such an ultimatum to their adopted, ADULT children and were obeyed. MOST of us Nmoms are not that insecure.

But the bottom line here is that stereotyping anyone, especially in the adoption reunion, open records arena, is cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. The "Us against Them" schism between mothers and adult adoptees as two separate groups IS unnecessary and counter-productive. All it takes to avoid this is to be careful to own our own situations without presenting it as an across-the-board portrayal of all mothers OR adoptees.

We have joined with adoptees in an effort to balance the scales for mothers, support the rights of our children to their original birth certificates and to bridge the gap between the two parties. I am sure that there are some mothers that would rather we wouldn't do that and some adoptees that would rather we not even show up in San Antonio in August.

But this is about all of us..not just the adoptee and not just the mother. There are decades of secrets, lies and painful experiences from which we all need to heal and even more decades of discrimination against both that must cease. We're all sensitive from our experiences. It doesn't take much to touch off that raw nerve on both ends of the discussion. Unfortunately, there are those among us who are so angry and so settled in that anger that trying to get those individuals to see reason and temper their comments with equity and compassion is dust in the wind. This is where I think we ALL need to be careful, adoptees and mothers, not to let those who have not dealt with their anger direct our actions.

I wish I could be mother to all the adopted adults who have met with heartache. I wish they all could be made welcome by their mothers and natural families.And I wish that the mothers who have been treated badly by the adoptee could have the kind of adult child that I have had the pleasure to meet, know and grow to admire and care for. I wish they could experience the love I have received from my adult, reunited children. I wish reunions were all wonderful but even the best have their thorny moments.

If anything gets done, it will be done better, quicker and more fairly if we do it together. I reiterate; We mothers of SMAAC support adoptees in their quest for open access to their Original Birth Certificates. We also believe that adult adoptees have the right to free association with any other adult, natural family members they wish to contact. And in saying that, we represent the thinking of the majority of Natural Mothers. Most mothers do NOT want to control their adult children. We're past the point where we want the aggravation. We know how to cut apron strings and nudge the young ones out of the nest.

As far as "Control?" I can just hear all of my children, raised and reunited, saying, should I try to exert control over their associations, "Get REAL, Mom," followed by belly laughs.

I so hope this clears smoke from the issue and that all my adopted friends know it is meant for a few, not all, and is a clarification, not an attack.

My Body, My Rights, My Decision, My Goddess!!

2011-02-20T21:34:00.000-02:00

It seems that all the patriarchal steam that has been building up in the breasts of the ultra-conservative, good-old-boy network of congress, the senate and even the clergy is erupting in the legislature. This article from MoveOn.Org about the war being waged against women has managed to piss me off more than anything that has happened in these benighted times. HOW DARE THEY? Chris Lee (R.GA), with the approval of the always offensive John Boner...er Boehner...is trying to drag us back into the cave with the rest of the Neanderthals. How can they actually propose to redefine rape? Take it from someone who has been there and had that done to her. Rape is rape whether the victim puts up a fight or not. It is either done through force, superior strength, threat of bodily harm or death or, coercion or, for the real loser rapist, drugs. EVERY WOMAN HAS A RIGHT TO SAY "NO," even to her husband and to have legal recourse if that is not respected.

The onslaught against Planned Parenthood, the Right to Choose and even our right to our place in society according to our abilities is under fire. John BoneHead and the Tea Party putzes seem to be playing right into the hands of the Adoption Machine. If we don't have access to birth control, if we are treated as second-class citizens with no autonomy and our sexuality seen as immoral and needing Federal regulation BY MEN, then there are going to be a big bunch of babies for the salivating customers of the Industry.

The NCFA is a powerful and effective lobby for the baby-brokers. These schmucks we have elected are going to push the agenda that gets their palms greased the most and appeals to the ignorant, don't-ask-questions-just-have-a-tea-party, voters. They toss out buzzwords like "socialism" but you won't find a one of them willing to forgo their pensions and government health care. What's wrong with that picture? And where are all those jobs the Tea Party promised us via the GOP??

Never, in my memory, has a president ever been as vilified by the opposition, shown as little respect and hog-tied as effectively as our current leader. I am sickened by the viciousness of the hatred directed towards this man. Hmmm..looks like racism to me. Everyone has their own opinion of his record of activity while in office, and a few of his supporters are unhappy, but we can't even address THAT for the "birthers" demanding witnesses to his birth and documentation above what was supplied by the state of Hawaii. That is a gigantic waste of time...a red herring and just another attempt to obliterate the social progress of the past several decades and keep women and workers under the thumbs of the haves.

As much as I would love to remain aloof from all these teapot tempests, I cannot mentally or emotionally transcend the vicious attack against the ground we have gained as women and the roadblocks being placed in front of our march to justice for the mothers of the EMS. Any type of adoption reform would be totally doomed if these reactionaries have their way. I am not just pissed...I am royally pissed.

The debacle in Wisconsin in another case of a government official trying to remake a state government in His Own Image. Governor Walker seems to think that taking from the middle class and giving to the rich makes him some kind of Robin Hood. Education and the right to organize will feel this one where it hurts. I hope the protesters hang in there.

The wealthy and big business are calling in all markers, now, to keep the IRS out of their offshore accounts. So the programs that stand the most likely chance of being the object of deep cuts are those that offer assistance to the most needy among us. I breathe a sigh of relief every month when I log into our account and see that our Social Security is still coming in. Seniors, single mothers, poor children, anyone with a need who isn't financially able to provide these needs for themselves, these will be the victims of the self-righteous , arrogant social engineers. Oh, and the arts will definitely get the shaft.

I hope that our government and the fat cats that really run it are taking note of what is happening in the Middle East. Where there is injustice, poverty and oppression of ANY sort, there is a ripe and ready arena for revolution. Our Constitution guarantees us the right to peacefully assemble and protest. I think a lot of that is going to be happening.

And I have developed a sudden and deep distaste for tea.

Barring Death and Disease..SA, Here I Come!

2011-02-16T12:17:00.000-02:00

Well, I tied down my airline reservations, yesterday. I don't know if there will be many SMAAC mothers in San Antonio in August, but this mother will be there, as will Musing Mother. I will be flying in on my wedding anniversary, leaving hubby at home with the two terrors..uh, I mean Terriers. That's how important it is to me to be a part of this gathering. I am lucky that he understands.

While this is a project of the Adoptee's Rights group, it will also be the first time that the mothers will be able to speak up for our rights as well as supporting the rights of adoptees to their original birth certificates. Will we be heard? I hope so, but it is also very important to note that we are actually speaking out in a venue other than blogs, letters and Facebook sites.

Our message will be a bit different from what has been talked about, prior to this occasion. We not only support the rights of adoptees, we also are stating that we mothers are worth the trouble of real consideration of our own rights, as well...rights that were badly violated when our children were taken for adoption during the Era of Mass Surrender. We are neither fragile flowers needing protection, nor are we nothing more than a rung on a ladder for our adult children to climb. We are self-respecting, mature women who can handle our own relationships and decide, for ourselves, what we will and will not share with others, especially when that right is threatened by the state.

No, Mr. and Ms. Legislator, we do NOT need protection of our "anonymity" from our own children. We have the freedom of association as it is guaranteed in the Constitution and we can pursue that as we wish. Most of us are in our 60's. We have survived the worst that life could throw at us. Why should we need legal protection of a presumed right we were never, in most states, given in the first place and why is it assumed we would even want it? WHEN are these people going to listen to us rather than the various adoption-friendly organizations who have the temerity to try to do our talking for us? That one really chaps my hide. Every time Pertman or Johnson or an adopter tries to speak for us, I see red.

We have long had our differences with the content of many of these bills being considered or that have passed in many states. We do not have any patience with the idea that our personal medical and psycho-social histories should be on tap for the state to disseminate to adult adoptees as they see fit. We have long believed that there should be true equality in who has access to open record which means that mothers should have access to identifying information of their adult children. Fair is fair.

And maybe, just maybe, there might be time to say something, while we are there, about justice for the mothers of our era. Perhaps there will even be an opening to let these people know that it still happens to women of the present day. Maybe we can help create a crack in the mortar that holds together an elitist institution, a social experiment that has failed. Maybe people could start seeing that the rights guaranteed us in our Constitution do not include the right to take children from mothers just because they are single or poor or the right to recruit women to bear children for the infertile.

Maybe the day will come, hopefully, when we are no longer soiled goods with fragile psyches still in our teens...maybe the day will come when adult adoptees are no longer treated as infants and property.

But, I'm getting ahead of myself..one step at a time. However, this IS history and we are helping to make it. If all I ever do is this one thing, I can be at peace with myself and let things happen as they come. It took a long time for this Industry to become the power house it is and it will take a long time to take it down a peg or ten.

At my age, I have nothing but time. We'll see.

A Valentine Wish For All

2011-02-14T11:10:00.000-02:00

As it has been shown here and as I have said on my FB page, we don't all see eye to eye. We don't all agree on the same course to take or have the same priorities. Some of us are more negatively affected than others although we all bear our scars.

But today, in my eyes, we are all just a large group of wounded mothers and their adult children who need love, even when we are at our most unlovable. It's hard to be sweet and likeable 24/7, anyway, even for those who haven't been traumatized by the grief without a grave.

So, whether you like or don't like the Primal Wound theory, whether you have a good reunion or no reunion or a bad one, whether you think all parties to the adoption farce should have equal access or not, you are all my Valentines, today. You are all in my heart and on my mind.

Whether or not you agree with my personal opinions, whether or not you have the same aims and goals that I do, I am loving you, today. We are all in that same, big, old, leaky boat sailing the sea of uncertainty and anger and confusion. We are all survivors, fighters and seekers of the truth. We might not agree on how to get there, some of us might be behaving from our broken and wounded state, but we all suffered an inconceivably painful loss. We all need love and affirmation. We all need to hear our truth told and heard.

So, short and sweet, because tomorrow we will probably be wrangling over the fine points again, Will You Please Be My Valentine, today?

With Love,
Just a Mom

Talk About Runaway Horses....Whew

2011-02-09T10:17:00.000-02:00

Some may notice that I deleted yesterday's blog entry which was MY personal take on the use of certain theories of therapy and trauma to justify calling NMoms nasty names. It was NOT directed at either side of the legislation debate nor was it meant to deny the real pain that comes from adoption. It was not posted to precipitate a debate on whether or not we should apologize to our children for anything. It was meant to say one thing and one thing only.

I. DID. NOT. ABANDON. MY. CHILDREN!!

I will not apologize for feeling like there is no excuse for any one adopted person slandering mothers across the board just because they drew a loser. I will not apologize for considering name-calling juvenile, ill-mannered and counter-productive.

We have reached a place I thought we'd never reach..where we are being acknowledged as having some stake and some rights in the ongoing battle. I didn't want to mess that up at all.

So, to my adopted friends, I am sorry if it sounded like I was denying your wounds. I don't deny them. I know they are real because I have a few of my own. I was objecting to the unkind, incorrect and vicious name-calling of a minute but very loud number of adopted adults.

As far as the legislation is concerned, I have friends on both sides of that issue and my ideas about it are already known. I also have a lot of respect for those on both sides of the legislation debate.

But I don't respect a person who doesn't even know me, lumping me in with the lowest common denominator of mothers. I don't respect people who don't even make the effort to be civil and mature. It was to those that I directed yesterday's blog...NOT to the entire community of adoptees.

And I still have serious reservations about Verrier's work. Now, I am going to go take something for this headache and sit in a dark room and scream like a chicken.

Time out, everyone!

Good Girls Did

2011-02-06T13:43:00.000-02:00

I am downloading Patti Hawn's book, "Good Girls Don't" to my Nook reader. I was just a couple of years ahead of her in age and giving birth, but it seems that she tells the story of many a Senior Exiled Mother. One thing about the book review I read that really resonated with me was the phrase, "(Hawn) tells of a time and society that young women of today find hard to visualize." Hell, the generation directly after ours finds it hard to comprehend the oppressive nature of the burden we bore to stay "pure."

I had several pairs of white gloves. I think they were reminders to us of our need to never sully our hands or ourselves with the dirt of the human animal's nature or we would be tainted, forever.

I have also been reading "The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession With Virginity Is Hurting Young Women" by Jessica Valenti. Same Stuff, Different Day. Now they have "Purity Rings" and father-daughter "Purity Balls" and abstinence-only pledges. While young men are invited to make a pledge, it still seems the emphasis is on the girls.

That little bit of tissue carries a lot of importance in this Puritanical society of ours. I know for a fact that many "Good Girls" did have sex before marriage and, unfortunately, some of us got caught with an unplanned pregnancy. During the course of those pregnancies, most of us fell in love with our little passengers and the real pain was just around the corner.

I remember asking a guy why he hadn't called me back after I refused his advances on a date. He told me then (1964), that there were "two kinds of girls, the kind you married and the kind you f*****." It was his opinion, since I was no longer "pure," that I was of the latter variety. Needless to say, I did get married, I had children I was allowed to keep and raise, but it took me decades to believe in my own basic decency and worth again. I had received that hypocritical message once too often and the shame stuck with me for a long time.

To give the younger generations an even more graphic picture of the kind of horror that greeted our painful confessions of fertility, a dear friend's mother put her in a tub and made her douche with Lysol. I wonder if she thought she could wash any previous activity away with a disinfectant?

Patti Hawn was sent away to a relative. Many of us were warehoused in maternity homes. The goal, for our families, anyway, was a daughter returned to them "re-virginized" and purified. I so wanted to be loved by my family. I wanted them to see the good in me. I wanted a lot of things, including the love and loyalty of my older daughter's father. I got nothing and had my babies removed from me, to boot.

I'll be interested to read Hawn's story. I hope she found peace and self-worth in her journey. It's a tough road to travel and none of us intended to make the trip. But few of us managed to be the person our purification was supposed to produce. Tragedy, loss and ostracism at a young age can change the course of a person's life in a big way. Many of us are now in our 7th decade of life and have come to terms with something that no one from the recent generations can even begin to understand.

It's funny. I see young girls at the Mall and out and about elsewhere wearing clothes that we were only allowed to wear at home. We would have been expelled had we ventured to school in a pair of jeans. Of course, we would be either withdrawn from school or expelled once our pregnancy became known. Girls were the property of their fathers and then became the property of their husbands. It took a bit of bitching to gain what autonomy we now enjoy. Anyone who thinks we have it made just has to read Valenti's book to see that we still have a struggle to overcome the prevalence of unrealistic, patriarchal expectations. It would be a total tragedy to see any more progress made in the effort to undermine and obliterate Roe v. Wade.

It's scary that there are those that want to take us back there. I wonder if white gloves and dresses would come back into fashion? Have you ever tried to keep white gloves clean?

Clorox would make a fortune.

What Do We Want?

2011-02-05T13:45:00.000-02:00

You know, FAQ bullet-point answers are all well and good, but when it comes to the question of what the Natural Mothers of SMAAC want, in my opinion it just can't be power-pointed into a nice little sentence or two. We do our best, but there is so much dangling over the sides that I keep wanting to expand the platform. I guess that is what these blogs are all about. Here, I can expand.

I remember when I was active in the early feminist movement of the late 60's -early 70's. I wrote a letter to the editor about something, I don't remember exactly what, and it was published. Of course, my name and location was also published.

I was appalled to receive a call from some strange man, the day after my letter appeared in the newspaper, asking me, in an exasperated tone, "just what do y'all want??" I told him I wanted the right to express my opinion without having a total stranger call my home and invade my privacy. He apologized, which surprised me, and said goodbye.

It's funny that now we are still trying, as Natural Mothers, to have the right to speak for ourselves and to educate others on the difference between privacy, confidentiality and anonymity. That's number one on my personal "I Want" list. I want other people to stop speaking for me. By other people, I mean anyone who supports adoption, benefits or profits from adoption and I do mean the likes of Adam Pertman, the NCFA, the ACLU and adopters. HOW DARE those entities speak for us?

I have to use the analogy of my friend, Musing Mother, who, in a discussion of the matter, said that a male adopter (Pertman) speaking for us is like a woman describing what it is like to pee standing up via a penis. It does not compute. WE know how we feel. For people like Pertman to presume to advocate for us (in a way that is sure to keep adoption a going concern) is more than just questionable...it is insulting.

Now, let me warn some FB friends from the get-go. I consider anyone speaking on behalf of Pertman and in his defense to be violating my rules about no pro-adoption or pro-adopter rhetoric here. I am not one of those who believes that for us to succeed we need adopters on our side. That's like the flies inviting the spiders to dinner. I can not conceive of there ever being a proper addressing of the crimes against the mothers and equal access to information happening with the assistance of those who adopt. It certainly won't happen with the "help" of the NCFA or the EBDI.

More than anything, I would love to see all these people stop their jawing and ask US what we want and then LISTEN. They might be amazed to learn that we are not frail, fragile, ignorant, deviant, amoral, careless or without respectability. Those few fear-ruled, shame-infused, coward moms that protest open OBCs need to put on their big girl panties and deal. Those of us who are not afraid of our pasts, are not ashamed of our lives and who care about the children we lost to adoption are stronger and more plentiful than these few, pitiful, shallow women who are being used by the industry.

Fast on the heels of wanting to be able to speak for ourselves and be heard, comes the wish that we could all come together, mothers and adopted people, without egos, rancor, stereotyping or arguments about trivia. If we could agree on one thing, that Natural Mothers and Adopted Adults deserve the human and civil right to know their origins or the welfare of their children without government, agency or any other institutional interference, that would be a start.

The ego thing, unfortunately, figures large and looming in the effort to organize and find common ground. There are a few that are so much more concerned with being the star of the show, more wounded than thou or leaving a legacy as the consummate experts on adoption that they draw back and unconsciously sabotage the rest of us...come to think of it, some of that sabotage has been pretty darn deliberate. There are a notable few who can disagree without being disagreeable. These folks can let others have their say, have their own and leave it at that.

Then there are the ones who hammer at a disagreement until they have alienated scores of people..people whose minds have not been changed one whit. That these people would shut the f*** up, is way,way up there on my Want List.

So, you see, when it comes to FAQ's, just getting past the first one..."What Do You Want?"....takes me a whole lot more than a couple of succinct sentences. But I am also a realist and know that attention spans are short and sound bites and Power Point presentations are the communication of the day. So SMAAC and ARD do a good and effective thing with the FAQ's.

But thank the Cosmos for blogs. Sometimes you just have to elaborate.

Elitist Feminism

2011-02-04T14:45:00.000-02:00

I find my best inspirations, here of late, in the blogs and comments of adopted people. Amanda's blog on Adoption, Surrogacy and Feminism should be a classic. It seems that protection of women and upholding the rights of women, including reproductive rights, seems to stop at these issues. Mothers with unplanned pregnancies are seen as incubators and surrogates are actively recruited as such. This is something that those of us who have been around the activism block knew but deserves retelling.

You would think that the use of women for breeding purposes for those who wish to adopt would be a Women's Issue, now wouldn't you? A movement that purports to uphold the reproductive rights and autonomy of all women should be up in arms when told our stories, shouldn't they?

NOW was approached, a long time ago, by activist mothers and they gave out the same kind of crap they give out now. They see adoption as a "reproductive right," but for WHOM? It is my observation that the right to adopt and to have a living incubator for a child is the exclusive, if unjustified, right of the women who wanted it all and didn't count on the biological clock and other factors. I have scary visions of a special class of incubator women who produce children for the elite faction of the so-called feminist movement. NOW is top-heavy with adopters as is the media and the entertainment industry. Margaret Atwood wasn't too far off the mark with "The Handmaid's Tale."

So, perhaps the feminist movement was so intent on proving that women were as capable as men that they forgot that there is one area where we are unique. The fact that we are the gender that brings life into the world is left in the dust of equal pay for equal work and the attempt to crash through that glass ceiling. That's where we start seeing, to quote my good friend, Celeste Billartz, "Woman's inhumanity to woman." Rather than seeing the need for more assistance and education to help women with unplanned pregnancies, they are falling back on the old "abort or surrender for adoption" garbage.

Just a bit of support would have been enough for most of us who truly wanted our children. An organization for women's rights should, in my mind, be in the forefront of the effort to provide ways for women and their infants to stay together and make a good life. Instead, they are putting on the steel-toed boots of the patriarchy and kicking us while we are down. Thanks for nothing, Sisters.

I really think that "Wake Up Little Suzie," by Rickie Solinger should be required reading for everyone who wants to become an advocate for the Natural Mothers of the BSE. If our children want to understand us, that book and Ann Fessler's, "The Girls Who Went Away," can help with that endeavor. To know how the same injustice has been carried into the present day, all we have to do is look around us and learn.

I am proud to be a woman. I think that I have intelligence and aptitudes that are the equal of any man. BUT, pregnancy and childbirth are exclusively issues of women. And the feminist movement has been so caught up in birth control and abortion rights that they have overlooked the multitude of women who have suffered a grievous injustice just because of their fertility. They seem to have very selective vision.

SMAAC will be joining the adoptees in San Antonio in August. I would love to have a sign that says, "Where are you when WE need you, NOW?" I wonder if they would notice?

A Gathering of Ghosts

2011-02-02T11:52:00.000-02:00

I read a great post on the 'My Birth Name Is Allison' blog, this morning, and it started a chain of thought in my mind about the haunting of the Natural Mother and the adopted person. Haunting sounds right because we are beleaguered by ghosts for our lifetime. The trauma of unnatural separation of mother and child is haunting, in and of itself.

You see, when a mother and her infant are separated in the almighty name of adoption, two people are lost forever...the person the child might have become had he/she been raised in the natural family and the person the mother might have been had she not lost that child. Those two people become nebulous and drift on the wind.

The NMom of the EMS, and afterwards for many, was left with the Grief Without a Grave. It was a tacit understanding that she could not openly grieve, and such grief is harder to reconcile since there was no death...the child she lost is alive, somewhere. The presence of that child, or in my case, children, hovers just out of reach of our sight and hearing but always THERE.

The loss of a child is so life altering that the person the mother might have become is lost, forever. I know that, rather than saving me and giving me a new shot at life, I struggled with trying to replace what I had lost, protect what I had from the nebulous "them" that might come and take my raised children and battle for my serenity and sanity. I also waged an all-out war for my respectability until I realized that I held it in my own grasp. The girl I was before and the woman I might have become were now members of that ghostly community.

The adopted person is also haunted and not just by the phantoms of the missing mother and other natural kin. They also lose the person they might have become had they grown up in their family of origin. They, too often, also lose themselves in order to fit the adopters' needs. Then, there is the haunting of the adoptee by the ghost children of the adopters...the natural children they might have had but couldn't. It's hard to live up to these ghosts and accept the realization that one is a second choice.

It is especially hard in the few instances where a child was adopted to replace a child who had died. It has and does happen. I know of one woman who was adopted to replace a little girl who died in infancy and she was even given the dead child's name. What a burden for a child to carry.

Natural Mothers suffering from secondary infertility, most often as a direct result of their initial loss, have a gaggle of "children that might have been" ghosts. Knowing a mother who had no other children because she felt that would have been a betrayal of the child she had taken for adoption is a vivid depiction of how lives are altered and dreams are murdered.

When we reunited, we also lose our fantasy children and mothers. I had set ideas of who my missing children had become based on the promises made to me of perfect lives for my children. What I found was nothing like what I had been promised. My children were damaged and in pain and that was nothing like my fantasy..nothing at all like the false assurances of the social workers. NMoms are often rejected or visited on the sly as Back Street Moms, not good enough to take their place in the lives of their own flesh and blood. When we find open hostility, it is a kick in the gut and another lost dream gone to Ghost Town.

And how many adopted people have fantasized about movie stars, rock icons and other prominent people as their mothers? How many have envisioned us as heartless, uncaring, careless tramps with no feelings for the child we lost? What they usually find is just us...everywoman. Human and still hurting, in most cases, from the loss we suffered all those years ago. Some find the fearful mother and a few find the mother who cannot allow the past back into her life. Add more fanciful constructs to the ghost community...reunion often tends to swell the ghost population rather than diminishing it.

Many popular ghost stories have to do with the avenging spirit. A person dies at the hands of another or commits suicide because someone has greatly disappointed him/her, and they haunt and terrify the offenders and all around them. These ghosts want justice.

Now, the real flesh and blood people want justice. We want it for the girls we were whose promise was often lost in grief. We want it for the identities stolen from our children. We want some form of this elusive justice for the mistreatment, the imposed fantasies, the human suffering, the unfair labeling and the fact that we and our children were subjects of a social experiment that evolved into an Industry with no conscience.

It has been said, here and by other mothers, that we may not see this justice in our lifetimes. But, should I die before it happens, I have every intention of doing my best to become an avenging spirit, haunting the agencies, the lobbyists, the government Industry apologists and the greedy customers of the Industry. I think I might make a very scary ghost.

BOO!

Momentum Is A Terrible Thing To Waste

2011-01-31T13:03:00.000-02:00

There is an fable by Aesop that I think of often when I think of the movement to find justice and equality for Natural Mothers and Adoptees. It's the one about "Belling The Cat."

" The Mice once called a meeting to decide on a plan to free themselves of their enemy, the Cat. At least they wished to find some way of knowing when she was coming, so they might have time to run away. Indeed, something had to be done, for they lived in such constant fear of her claws that they hardly dared stir from their dens by night or day. Many plans were discussed, but none of them was thought good enough. At last a very young Mouse got up and said: “I have a plan that seems very simple, but I know it will be successful. All we have to do is to hang a bell about the Cat’s neck. When we hear the bell ringing we will know immediately that our enemy is coming.”

All the Mice were much surprised that they had not thought of such a plan before. But in the midst of the rejoicing over their good fortune, an old Mouse arose and said:

“I will say that the plan of the young Mouse is very good. But let me ask one question: Who will bell the Cat?”

It is one thing to say that something should be done, but quite a different matter to do it."

Since the SMAAC position paper on Equal Access was published, there have been quite a few enthusiastic comments and no small amount of optimism. Not only is everyone excited by the idea that something might get done, it seems everyone has a different idea about how it should be done and then there are those who say it can't be done and we should be placing our focus elsewhere.

There are so many chiefs and so few warriors that it gets top-heavy in activism land. Then there are those that talk and say but don't follow through. I'm ashamed to admit that I've been one of those when it comes to taking my place at events and venues. The problem is that life intervenes. It's sort of like our plans to relocate for our retirement. The housing market bust has put the kibosh on that one for a while. We want to go here and we want to go there but can we afford the journey? Can we be sure that we or a family member doesn't fall ill?

It has been suggested that we take this fight to the streets and to the source. That is a really good suggestion but how many are willing to leave the comfort of the home, many of us in our Golden Years, to stand on hard pavement, holding signs and shouting slogans? How many of us are willing to put our names out there, to be recognized as an Exiled Mother of the EMS? How many of us are ready to spend long, boring hours in the heat or cold, sitting behind a table and giving out flyers? Money is an issue. How many are willing to donate for the cause?

Let's say the Industry, with its lobbyists and government toadies, is the cat and we are the mice. One of us against that behemoth would be news-worthy but foolish. The cat is a light sleeper and just one of us couldn't sneak up on it and place the bell around its neck. But enough of us surrounding the fat cat would certainly distract it and we just might be able to be heard above its yowling.

I have had my share of those who would lead us who delegate, critique the efforts of all their troops and then are nowhere to be found when it's time for a reckoning. I have grown tired of those who are sure they know a better way but no practical methods to achieve their better ideas. I am weary of egos, of people wanting to be the "go-to experts" in this area and who are more concerned with their imagined "legacies" than with justice.

Most of all, I am tired of watching people getting all excited, only to watch that excitement wane, lose substance and swirl down the drain to another repeat of the sound of silence.

I do what I do. I am a writer who pulls from my passions and flow of consciousness. I am a good rabble rouser with the extra advantage of having truth as a subject matter. I can provide a warm body and a fairly eloquent and fervent speech or two. I am willing to put those talents and attributes into this fight. I will be in San Antonio in August (barring death or disease*. I am one mouse who is ready to face the cat.

The question is, who is going to help us bell the cat? Gosh, it just got awfully quiet in here.

Cover Me! I'm Going In!!

2011-01-29T12:16:00.000-02:00

Thus speaks the hero as he/she takes on all comers, single-handed. In the more cliche action movies, the hero usually lives and all the supporting cast is killed except for one or two "special" friends. This is presented as a realistic picture of combat by the entertainment industry. Real life wars are a whole other proposition. To win the important battles, the warriors cover each other and each life is vital and valued.

We are fighting our own war, a kind of revolution against the social engineers, keepers of the keys, guardians of the status quo and the Industry and its Almighty Dollar. As more and more Natural Mothers and Adult Adopted People from the EMS come together and compare notes, the common enemy is revealed. This enemy worked so hard at pitting us against each other that they disregarded the fact that we had minds, voices and perceptions of our own.

Where there were the rare uncaring NMoms, the anger and hurt of the rejected adoptee was stoked to a fever pitch. Where there was secrecy-burdened family dysfunction, the fear of the mother was encouraged by arrogant assumers and presented as the norm. They ALMOST had us all, but a bunch of us have escaped the stockade and set up a bivouac and are plotting our strategy.

This is not going to be an easy war to win. What we want is HUGE. What the Industry stands to lose if the injustices against us and our children are revealed is HUGE. The legal profession, much of the professional medical community, churches and our own national government are on the side of the secrets, lies and distortions of fact that are the common arsenal of the Industry. Some of us older NMoms know there is a chance that we will not be alive to see the objectives achieved, especially the one of recognition and justice for the BSE mothers. It will be a bloody war and there will be casualties.

Each soldier in this endeavor has their own skill to bring to the fracas. Some are gifted in the areas of research, some can draft organizational and position documents, some know their way around state and national congresses and some of us can write from our passion and emotions, and do some rabble-rousing of our own. What matters is that there are more of us firing our own particular ammo at the same target rather than at each other. Too many have fallen to "friendly fire" and that is something that shouldn't happen.

If the USSR, England, France and the US could come together to defeat Adolph Hitler in WWII, then we, of different perspectives, can use our resources against the same enemy. Cooperate, yes, but accept the role in which you have landed. Not everyone can be a General and many shouldn't be one.

So "Praise the Family Tree and pass the ammunition!" Cover us! We're going in!!

WOW!!

2011-01-28T11:59:00.000-02:00

The fact that a bit of history was made, yesterday, has just begun to work itself into my brain. The time for Natural Mothers and Adopted Adults from the EMS to stand together, mutually respectful and equally committed is long past, but better late than never.

The idea of the mother being a mere platform on which the adopted person stood to gain their rights is one that cannot succeed. Working together in mutual support can and will succeed if we follow through. Perhaps we are finally maturing and realizing that, good reunion or bad reunion, all arguments over who was more damaged aside, we need each other. What a concept.

Not all of us are on the same page. Not all of us will be. There are egos and cherished angers and a lot of other dynamics going on. There are some so damaged that their input could be toxic to the goal. No one has said this would be a fairy tale where the records were opened and everyone lived happily ever after.

But there are enough of us seeing the big picture to make a noise loud enough to be heard, one that can't be ignored. I am looking into venues where the SMAAC Position on Equal Access can be published in order to reach more people. The help of our adopted friends would go a long way, here. Attaching the position statement to their own sites and publications would help. Some have already done so.

This act of the NMoms stems from a long, frustrating journey. Our displeasure at certain entities in the Industry and those who adopt for presuming to speak FOR us is at a peak. We're mad as Hell and are not going to take it any longer. If you want to know how a mother feels and what a mother thinks, ask a MOTHER, not an adoption lobbyist, an adoption think-tank or an adopter. That should be a no-brainer, yet I see media coverage of the open records debate that either does not include a Natural Mother or only includes one who is sympathetic to adoption. That's like asking a Stepford Wife if she is happy with her life.

Our silence has been too loud and those of us who began to speak out, earlier, had to shout ourselves hoarse to be heard above it. We were told to go and never tell and too many of us took that to heart. Millions of us have hidden in plain sight for decades. I came out of the fog 18 years ago and it was like being able to breathe after being caught in a dust storm.

Those of us who questioned the necessity for adoption, who talked about justice and acknowledgement for the mothers and who felt our issues were also important were described as radical, militant, strident, bitter and angry (like anger is a bad thing?)...you name it. Sticks and stones will break our bones, but tell the truth and you're a bitch. Well, we're still standing and still saying the same thing. And we have our self-respect...something the industry and all who contributed to our tragedy tried to take from us forever.

The wall is not down. The bastion of adoption mythology still stands and OBCs and other records are still held hostage. But, after this week, I discern a bit of a crack in the mortar. SMAAC Moms...we done good!