That Was Then...Look At Now

In 1962, ANY young woman who had even just one sex partner outside the bonds of holy deadlock was called a Slut, with impunity. And we had no recourse except to hold our heads up and try to survive. Some went into the closet and never came out again. Round heels, whores, "mattress-backs," tarts, hussies, easy and pushovers...those were just a few of the ways people referred to even the young woman who loved not wisely but too well. We were even held to blame if we were raped.

Once the Slut Bomb was thrown at you, it was hard to shed the title. In a small town where everyone knew everyone, it was nearly impossible. Girls were having sex that were either lucky or infertile. One woman I know who bragged of her virginity on her wedding day admitted to servicing her fiance manually until the big night.

The thing I find so absurd is that, had we had access to safe,

effective birth control in those days, we would have passed the marital finish line with reputation intact. Our fecundity was the curse that landed us in Slut-land. Back then, we just put up with the indignities that the cruel and Puritanical laid on us and tried to get on with living, as hard as that was. I was one that was determined to regain respectability by hook or crook. I don't think, in the eyes of my small community, that I ever did it. Once labeled, always labeled.

Now a young woman, a student, comes before Congress to plead the case for birth control for all and she gets slammed in the worst way with no evidence but that she advocates for the rights of all women to have access. The pompous and misanthropic Rush Limbaugh made crude observations and even cruder suggestions. And American women are up in arms and ready to do battle.

THIS is the kind of progress that has happened since I was a "teen-aged, unwed mother" in the early '60's. I, silly me, thought that the days of judging women by such stringent and unreasonable guidelines was over. But there is that small, LOUD, sex-obsessed group of theocrats, pundits and right-wing extremists who want to drag us all, kicking and screaming, back into the 19th century.

We, the products of our generation, had no real arena in which to protest the outrageous sexism of our day. Women struggled for one and got it and now they are geared up to use it. Women from all over the country and good, open-minded men, have written and called the sponsors of Limbaugh's show, carried on Clear Channel outlets, and he has apologized, weakly, twice. He is losing ad revenue for his sponsors and I see him fading away, just as Glenn Beck is doing. One woman answered his challenge in the New York Times.

I, for one, can't let this idiocy go unchallenged. The pudgy pundit is just one example of the unfair war against women..an attempt to "keep us in our place" by the powerfully insecure. We have GOP-heavy state legislatures churning out the anti-choice legislation as fast as they can but not doing a damn thing about the economy or jobs. We have a Klown Kollege Kampaign with Mittens McMoney, Ron "Stormfront" Paul, Newt "Philanderer" Gingrinch and the worst of the crazies, Sick Rantorum or "Frothy" (Google him).

What is worse is that there are other women who support this retrogression of our gender by force. They are the ones who blow me away. The pursed lips, bibles in hand and the box of tea bags usually gives them away. These prissy, asexual types would make good adoption agency social workers.....or nuns. I am sick of seeing hands slapped and voices stifled just because they are female. Oh, they allow the likes of Caribou Barbie, Coulter, Bat-Crazy Bachmann and others like them to have a say, but they speak as puppets of the Patriarchy or because they are simply nuts. As this gem from Patricia Heaton illustrates; "I really have great sympathy for Ms. Fluke and so in order to help her out I want to urge everyone to place at least one (unused) condom in an envelope and send to her at:Sandra Fluke C/OGeorgetown University Law Center600NewJersey Ave., NW,Washington,DC20001Maybe if enough of us respond she can make it through at least the next few months." For this atrocity in the LATimes, she offered a Limbaugh-Weak apology.

The GOP would not allow Sandra Fluke to testify in front of their panel yet entertained a full contingent of male clerics as "experts" on women's health. Sex-obsessed and using the fallacious sins of Eve to charge forth, these misogynists are forgetting one thing. Women are not like they were in the bad old days. We have a voice.

This upcoming election is important to the mothers of the BSE in more ways than one. We can erase that scarlet letter, once and for all, for us and our female progeny, by voting these dickless wonders out of office and refusing to remain silent. We have talked about our outrage at how we were treated in the past. How can we stand by and allow it to happen again?

We can speak up, now. They can throw names all they like, but we don't have to pick them up and wear them. They took our self-esteem, our autonomy and our babies and left us with ashes and they got away with it.

But that was then and this is now.

Strangest Bedfellows

I have been more political than adoption-oriented of late. And I went through a long, dry spell when I just couldn't, with all the other crap going on in the world, work up even a little bit of the old passion and fire. But Rick Santorum....yes, that's right...Rick Santorum, Old Frothy himself has geared me up for another go.

I will never understand mothers of loss who adopt. And you can bet your paycheck that, once they do, the adopter trumps the mother, everytime. I have a harder time with women who went through the injustice and indignities of the BSE who vote for the anti-choice candidates and are content with extremist, right-wing MEN making decisions about birth control.

HAVE WE LEARNED NOTHING?? If we ever, ever get a shot at justice, it is not going to be on the specious prayers of the rigid, Dominionist right. As far as they are concerned, we are still in the 19th century and we are still sluts. There is a cartoon showing what the inauguration of Frothy would be like and it showed all the women in burkhas. That is NOT far from the reality that this man espouses.

While Santorum pushed me over the edge, I have been getting nearer and nearer to that precipice as I watch the GOP members of Congress at work. Are they debating job programs. Have they introduced any legislative solutions to the economic crisis? Hell no! They are too concerned with what goes on in our bedrooms and reproductive organs to do something actually productive. They are trying a strategy of flogging us with ideology while dazzling us with sanctimonious bullshit.

With a group of asshats like that in power, justice and adoption reform of any kind are just a distant dream. Yeah, I know the pro-adoption bunch sit on both sides of the aisle but tell me the truth. Can't we have a better chance with elected officials that try to respect the rights of women in general or am I going daft in my dotage?

Those of us in my age group, the mothers of the BSE, know what it was like to have no autonomy, little say in our own fate or the fate of our infants and living our experience as the daughters of Eve...responsible for the lusty behavior of the male 50% of our dilemma. We remember when we were held responsible if we were raped. It was all on our shoulders.

So we were good girls and tried to be the best mothers we could be and were constantly told that the best mother we could be would be an "un-mother" and that our children would really be grateful. Guess what. Most of them didn't like it worth a damn!

I had thought that we had come a long way from that oppressive time. But if we don't use our memories and if we fall for the Pharisee that shouts "Lord! Lord!" the loudest, we are going to lose some precious ground. The government will be in our beds, our healthcare and our reproductive decisions and we will be back in the same old boat. Screw that! There have been too many broken hearts, too many tears, too many relationships that are forever bent out of recognizable shape by an unnatural separation. There have been too many families torn apart too many times by people who HAVE NO BUSINESS MESSING IN OUR BUSINESS!

These are the same people who cry out for smaller government yet want to micro-manage the lives of women. We have to send a strong message to these good old boys. We have to boot them out of the bedroom and vote them out of our wombs. Our marital status, our decisions about contraception and pregnancy, our sexual orientations are not what government is about.

Jobs, healthcare, education, infrastructure....all these are the things to which our national government and our state governments should be attending. Any mothers who are in league with the extremist Far Right are into extremely strange bedfellows or else they are just masochists who can't use the brains they were born with.

Excuse me if I refuse to lie down with control freaks who want to tell me what I can and cannot do with my own body. There!

Beating A Dead Horse Can Be Good

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.

Bless Their Hearts

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.

All About Dad

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.

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.

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.

Pissed Off And Proud

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.

Birthdays Are Getting Better

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.

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.

Logic 101

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

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."

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.

Put A Plug In Pertman

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!

Mother...More Than A Name

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.

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

Talk About Runaway Horses....Whew

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!

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?

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.