A Little Less Talk.......

....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

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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!

Too Much Life Going On....

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......

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

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

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

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

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

(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?

How To Get Back On Track?

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.

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

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

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!!!

Just Sayin', You Know?

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!

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.

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

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

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

Good Girls Did

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.

Elitist Feminism

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

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

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.