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.

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.

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.

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

Door Mats of the Word, Rebel!!

I have really enjoyed seeing the New Year's resolutions of my loved ones. I am impressed by two. My son has resolved to develop more of an empathetic personality. I am so proud that he would make this kind of decision about his own demeanor.

And another loved one, another thinking member of our clan, has resolved to quit being a door mat, to learn how to say no and to not be drawn into things she cannot change. Good for you, Honey!!!

I made the same decision, although not for a New Year's resolution. I don't usually make any resolution on the first of January except to continue to hope, love and do my best to be a good person. This came as I entered my 40's and realized that I needed to be my own advocate and support because I was leaning too much on others.

I can so identify with the scary leap from door-mat-hood to full, autonomous human being. I was a wuss who couldn't say no and who tried to fix things for others. I went along with what others said, even when I disagreed, deep inside myself, with what was being said. Giving myself the right to say "No," to speak up and have my own opinions was the first step in recovering the woman whose personality was ravaged when her two, oldest children were taken from her.

I had to learn that it was more important to respect and like myself that to be liked by everyone. Of course, you have to take the flak from those who liked the devil they knew rather than this new, more assertive and self-confident person. I graduated from meek and easily upset to "shrill, bitter, angry, bitchy" and many other adjectives used by the folks who disagreed and who were used to me bending to their wills. It's part of the bargain. I learned to live with the disappointment.

But I noticed other side effects of this change in my perspective and attitude. I stopped whining and started opining. I stopped the pity parties and put on my smarty pants. I developed the ability to laugh with and at myself. In fact, I laughed a lot more than I had before. I learned to ride the waves of life without going berserk. It was like a curtain, slowly lifting to show a sunlit vista and it is worth facing the fear and entering the struggle. To say I am perfectly there would be a lie. But the work is progressing nicely.

And I learned that I did not deserve what was done to me as a single, teen mother.

Strong women who stand up for themselves, no matter how courteously they do so, will always be called "bitches" by her detractors. Well, a bitch is a female dog and there are some of those noble critters that I respect a lot more than some people I know. So call me a bitch if you have to. I'll take it as a compliment.

I just wish I had been enough of a bitch and less of a door mat in '62 and '63. Of course, back then, NICE girls were career door mats. It was pounded into us at home, in school, at church and in every media presentation of what was the ideal woman.

I have a loved one who went to far in the other direction and was a bit of a belligerent bully when we were growing up. I didn't want to be like that. I would rather be respected than incur fear. I feared all authority figures in my life and let one or two get away with things that no one would get by with, today. It is tragic that I was not where I am today, back then. Things would have been very different.

But spilled milk calls for a clean-up. I think an application of justice and redress would do the job. Meanwhile, I am rooting for my relative and her courageous resolution. May her ovaries grow big and strong!

Do We Need To Change More Than Just Adoption?

I am looking at my country and its foibles with a loving but critical eye and I have detected a huge web with a big, fat spider sitting there, just waiting to feed on anyone and everyone it can. Arachnus Americanus is a creature born of greed and arrogance. She carries the venom of financial elitism and a vicious nature born of the assumption of her own superiority. She was crafted by the hands of patriarchal control freaks. She is very good at being a predator.

At the command of her male creators, she has enshrouded both Lady Liberty and Miss Justice in copious cobwebs. A once-proud eagle is ensnared in her web. Her victims are the poor, the weak, and the disenfranchised which includes the single mother and her infant. She injects the mother with hopelessness and shame and keeps the child a child forever. Her many legs manipulate and spin and obfuscate. She is one busy arachnid.

Our nation is ill. And the American Way of adoption is just one symptom. There had to be something very wrong at the start for this system of human bondage and opportunistic baby-theft to exist. Our supposedly "Free" country has those in power, the wealthy, who exercise an amount of control that is obscene. Using spin doctors, smoke, mirrors and erosion of the educational system, these spider-makers assure their places at the top of the heap, their weight pressing down on those at the bottom. The venom of the nasty creepy-crawlie even makes some walk, willingly, into the web. These are the victims that have fallen prey to the dumbing down of our culture and citizenry. The best way to control is to keep intelligence and free thought in check.

In other countries, this has led to revolutions. Here, it leads to filibusters, sound bites, arguments and ignorance while Ms. Spider spins away, catching more and more of our rights, opportunities and our social conscience in her massive web. Motherhood is dishonored and the weakest among us are disregarded or prey or both.

To say I have become disenchanted with our power structure would be understating it. I fear the sneaky and falsely pious intrusion of the Christian Right. I abhor the pundits who fill the airwaves with fear-mongering lies and rabble rousing of the gullible. I look at the "Tea Party" and see eight, gleaming, black eyes staring back at me with venom dripping from sharp mandibles. I see the in-fighting between the parties and the mud being slung with abandon and I want to cry. I see the gross, racist, juvenile disrespect being shown our President and I hang my head and try not to watch.

It's no accident that the spider is female. In the arachnid world, the female is the web-spinner and the one with venom. She is the hunter and the killer. The patriarchy has managed to use human women in this way, turning us against each other, allowing some to prey on their sisters for coveted children and still managing to use us as chattel and sex objects despite all the best efforts of feminists and those with just plain common sense. Have you ever noticed, when stupid girls get into physical altercations over a boy, what the boys do? They watch and laugh. The patriarchy has no compunction against using us against each other in order to maintain the status quo.

Just like everything else, this nation has its good points. There are those who escape the web and the effects of the poison and let their voices be heard. There are those who can keep an open mind and question the dichotomous, scare-tactic rantings of the pundits. There are still those who believe in civil and human rights and the quality of real justice. There is beauty in our nation, from mountains to seas. There is a plethora of possibilities if only they could be pursued.

But I fear that, before any possibilities are pursued, before our social conscience is restored and before the real glory of our nation is returned to us, its people, we have a big spider to exterminate. If you don't vote, if you don't talk to our elected leaders and let them know that we know what has happened to the US and if you don't speak out, nothing, including restructuring of adoption, open records and redress, is going to happen. It's going to still be the same old, same old.

I'm ashamed of what America has become. As for our spider, I am ready to put the Raid to the bitch.

It's A Man's World

WOW...we definitely had a white Christmas in WV and enjoyed it. I did some reading while I was sitting by the fire and watching the snow fall. I have so many thoughts bouncing around inside my skull that I am going to have to take some time to sort it all out into some semblance of order. In addition to Rohan McEnor's excellent story, I read a bit in "The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession With Virginity Is Hurting Young Women," by Jessica Valenti. Meant as a feminist publication, it reaches into the heart of the reasons behind the way single and/or poor mothers are treated and have been treated in this society.

Simply and concisely, we were punished, NOT for being sexually active, but for being sexually active and daring to be fertile with no husband. It is a system by, for and in deference to the patriarchy. MEN decided the mores, the codes and creeds and women were indoctrinated and controlled by them. They have even managed to disrupt the sisterhood of women so that we prey on each other. Cat fights over boyfriends have become commonplace. A woman stalks another woman to procure a child and will have no compunctions about the pain she is bringing to one of her own kind.

All that stands between the Natural Mother and respectability is the absence of a thin membrane, the hymen, and the lack of a wedding ring on that fourth finger, left hand. Someone, somewhere decided that these things were vital to the worth of a woman and that someone was male. No, I don't think all men are chauvinist pigs. I am privileged to know many fine men who respect a woman based on who and what she is rather than her sexual activity, past and present. But, don't you ever wonder why there is no corresponding insult for the other gender to compare with "slut?"

It can be said that we have come a long way, but we still have a long way to go. I find it amusing that, while the fundies berate the Roman Catholic church, many of them are just as adamant that women are to be seen and not heard from in the pulpit. If they are, it is as a "helpmate" to their more acceptable husband. We are the only so-called "modern" nation in this world not to have had a woman either in high national office such as the vice presidency or even as head of state. Secretary of State seems to be the political glass ceiling. We are goods, consumables, products that produce and we had better do it King James' way or watch out.

I wonder what might have happened had the rulers of Judea been women? The Judeo-Christian system would be very different. Or what if there had been no religion at all and each person was valued for their contribution to life and society regardless of age, race, gender or ethnicity? John Lennon had it right even if he didn't know 100% of the reason why.

The fact is that many of us lost our infants to adoption, especially during the BSE, because some 2000+ years-old group of greybeards decided that we were not fit to do anything unless we were joined to a man as his chattel.  Ms. Valenti didn't tell me anything in her book that I didn't really already know. She just put it into a very coherent and readable book. She addresses the current movement of abstinence and virginity importance in her book and has some very good thoughts about the whys and wherefores of all this. She states....."I'm more than a little suspicious of those who see women's advancement as a bad thing....The regressive message the virginity movement pushes through...books and media is clue enough about what it really wants from women: not independence and adulthood but submissiveness, 'modesty' and adherence to traditional gender roles. Focusing on our sexuality is just one piece, and a tool, of the larger agenda. After all, there's a reason why the assumed role of women in virginity-movement screeds is marriage and motherhood. The movement believes that's the only things women are good for."

This also leaves the field wide open for old-style shame and blame baby-taking. The only good motherhood is male-approved motherhood. All else must be engineered to suit the patriarchy and their world view.

People often wonder why I profess no connection to organized, Christian religion. They think that I blame the  loss of my infants on a few prudes but it goes deeper than that. Following this model lauded by the patriarchy did away with my most precious possession next to my children...myself. That creed of shame and the unrealistic expectations placed on young, healthy women raped me of my autonomy, my self-worth and left me feeling, for a long time, that I did not, indeed, deserve the right to raise my two oldest children.

So I pay heed to Valenti's words and the message of her book. If we don't fight this anti-woman insanity and teach our young women about self-protection and self-worth, we are condemning another generation of our daughters and granddaughters to this same emotional rape, grief and despair. As long as we sit back and accept the idea that "it's a man's world," and let it be, then we are setting up more young mothers for the worst kind of pain.

And the bitch of it is that women will be doing it to each other.

Man Rescues Dog..Dog Rescues Baby Girl

This is supposedly a true story from the Mother Earth News. It seems a farmer in Scotland found a litter of puppies alongside a country road. Only one of the puppies was alive. She was bleeding from the head but was breathing and had a strong heartbeat, so he took her home and nursed her back to health. The puppy grew to be a valued member of the family and gave birth to a couple of litters of her own before she was spayed. She took care of her people and all the farm animals.

One day, she returned to the farmhouse with a bundle in her mouth and deposited it in her bed. The farmer took a look and was amazed to find a little, human baby...a girl, suffering a bit from exposure but otherwise healthy. The little girl went on to grow up and become a nice young lady. Her farmer friend and canine savior had long since passed away.

When I was born, my grandparents had a female lab, shepherd mix named Smoke. She was a really bright and well-behaved dog. From the minute they moved my crib in and placed me inside it, her place to sleep was under my crib. If I awoke, she alerted the household until someone came to see about me. She worked guard duty when I began toddling, pulling me away from the stairs by my diaper. My memories of her are blurry, but the stories told to me by my parents and grandparents are precious to me. I have a badly faded photo of baby-me and Smoke under the Christmas tree with bows on our heads.

It has recently dawned on me that, for these deluded mothers of today who are "choosing" specific adopters and "adoption plans (yuck)," that they might want to make sure that the PAPs have a dog. That way, since Mommy is being edged out of the picture, they could check out the canine family member and be sure that their little ones are getting unconditional love of the highest order. My Grampa once told me that Smoke would have fought off a grizzly bear to save me.

She didn't adopt me. She didn't see me as a replacement for pups she didn't have. She saw me as her human responsibility and a pack leader in the making. My mother would cringe when Smoke gave me a kiss, but I would just chortle in delight. Smoke fetched my cup, my blanket and my toys and would present them to my mother to wash off and return to me. I first walked holding on to her back. She was Nana, Lassie and Rin Tin Tin all in one. Her love for me was uncomplicated by her own needs and fiercely protective.

I was a lucky kid. I was 9 when she died. I do remember that as a very bad day. She stayed with Gramma and Grampa when we moved to SC because she was already getting on in years and the trip would have been hard on her. It was a tearful goodbye and would have been worse had I known it was our last time together.

Perhaps the smart thing to do to screen PAPs, better than the home study, would be to have them adopt, YES, ADOPT, a dog that really needs a home from a local shelter or rescue group. These canine babies come with issues and that would test the unconditional love factor. If they pass that test, then MAYBE, if there is a child that needs the guardianship of others not of their kin, then they could assume that legal responsibility. But no game playing.

Oh, we call ourselves, "Mommy and Daddy" to Dolly but we have better sense than to indulge in a fantasy that she is our real child. Indulging in that fantasy with children born to other families is just as dumb and very damaging in the long run. When the need to fulfill that "as if born to" impossibility becomes obsessive, you have very screwed up children growing up with a lot of heavy baggage. What we do to our children in adoption, we wouldn't do to a dog.

Right now, there are more domestic, companion animals needing homes than there are homes for them. Thousands are euthanized every week. It is such a simple thing to spay and neuter our little friends. It is such a simple thing to teach our adolescent children about birth control. It is such a simple thing to put the money we were putting into 5-figure tax breaks for adopters and tax cuts for the affluent into helping a mother and her child get a fair start in life. It's such a simple thing to honor the mother-child bond without bringing judgment and Victorian attitudes into it. It's such a simple thing to recognize and address the crimes committed against these mothers and their children over the years.

It's all as simple as a dog's devotion to people that would move that so-called "dumb" animal to rescue and guard a human child. Nature's wisdom seems to beat out the assumed wisdom of humanity every time.

Thanks, Smoke.

Caution; Raw Nerve-Do Not Touch

It seems I touched a few of those raw nerves with my blog, yesterday, about codependency. I'm glad I did. It's time, I feel, for those of us who have been abraded by the brier patch of adoption to put some salve on those wounds and get over ourselves. There comes a point when we have to quit trying to hold a house of cards together against the wind of truth.

I'm back to the jackass in the ditch, again. We all know how the dysfunction of adoption separation has adversely affected both adopted people and natural mothers. But isn't it past time that we stopped using that past trauma as an excuse to fight among ourselves and started fighting back and allowing personal growth? Let's get the jackass out of the damn ditch!

This is personal stuff. This is the only life we have. We can allow misperceptions and mythology to continue on being in control, or we can take back the helm and steer our own course.  We just have to have the courage to hear and accept the truth and learn that it isn't always about us.

When I was a little girl and someone said something I didn't want to hear or I wanted to win an argument without having the words, I would stick my fingers in my ears and sing, real loud, "La, la  la, la....." until the other person shut up or left. Yes, that was childish. I was a child. But I see a big bunch of adults doing the same damn thing and it is very unbecoming.

PAPs and adopters are good at this. If you refuse to hear and accept the truth, then you can keep on at what you are doing, guilt-free....sorta. But that's their own character defect with which to deal. If any of them can listen and learn and be honest with themselves, good for them.

Many adopted people don't want to hear the truth about how they came to be adopted. It's easier to be angry, believe every word their adopters told them and blame it all on Mommy. Many mothers don't want to let go of that fiction of the sacrificing mother/heroine. They might have to admit we were powerless and/or got scammed and that would be to admit we were vulnerable (weak) and/or naive (stupid). Boy, do we have our hang-ups or what?

And BOTH adopted people and mothers want a perfect (as they think it should be) resolution to it all, and there ain't no such animal. The part about regaining our emotional health and equilibrium goes way beyond open records and redress for the maltreatment of mothers. It is about who we choose to be now, how we choose to be treated and to treat others and whether or not we are brave enough to accept and integrate the truth into our hearts. It starts with one step in the direction of the realization of the fact that none of us know it all, that we cannot control everything and everyone around us and that we can all have the right to be respected if we give respect.

In some cases, unfortunately, we also have to learn when to let go. It is hard for someone who has no self-respect to respect others. No one, mother or adult child, should be an emotional punching bag for the other. If it doesn't work out, it's sad, but there is still a life to be led. When one or the other is severely dysfunctional, then taking it personally is really self-defeating.

I was just out back watching my husband play keep-away with our little dog. She has had it rough..lost her people, had little real training in life skills and spent a lot of time being barked at, having her food stolen and being pushed around by bigger dogs while in the kennel. They call her condition, "Kennel Shock." The dog running circles around her "daddy" is not the same dog we found at the SPCA kennel six weeks ago. Every day I see her grow. She no longer has "accidents" in the house. She is less fearful of strangers and other dogs. She walks with a prance and her tail up when before she stayed nose to the ground and wanted to run home if she saw anyone. While we were outside, the little dog two houses down started barking. That was usually a signal for Dolly to run back to the door and beg to go in. This time she ran to a good vantage point to investigate what all the noise was about. When she saw that Krista just wanted in, she ran back to play a bit longer. She is living in the now. She is forgetting what happened that led to the fearful and aggressive behavior she was showing. She's erasing the old tapes. She's living in the moment.

Now I don't think that we can just erase our memories and go blithely about as if none of this adoption separation crap never happened. But we can try living with what is. We can fight for justice for past and even
current  injustices and we can fight for equal civil rights, but we don't need to be fighting, blaming and carping at each other. We are adults. Dolly is no longer a puppy, and, while she has us, she needs to learn how to get on in the world in a healthy way. So do we, together in reunion or apart as in, "Oh well, it didn't work out," we have a right, all of us, to pursue happiness and enjoy peace of mind.  Being imperfect human beings, that happiness and peace of mind won't be perfect, either.

But wouldn't it be a lot better than that constant knot in your belly? The tears, the crushing need and the resentment are products of an unnatural situation that, yes, was unfair and horrible to us and to our children. But we can't change what happened then and the blame needs to go where it belongs.

As long as we fight each other and blame each other, the Industry and those that the Industry benefits are getting exactly what they want from us. Think about it.

It's That Day Again

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


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

MOTHER AND CHILD REUNION
music and lyrics by Paul Simon

No I would not give you false hope, On this strange and mournful day,
But the mother and child reu-nion, Is only a motion away,
Oh, little darling of mine, I can't for the life of me,
Remember a sadder day. I know they say let it be,
But it just don't work out that way. And the course of a lifetime runs,
Over and over again.



No I would not give you false hope,On this strange and mournful day,
But the mother and child reu-nion, Is only a motion away,
Oh, little darling of mine. I just cant believe it's so,
And though it seems strange to say, I've never been laid so low,
In such a mysterious way, And the course of a lifetime runs,
Over and over again.


But I would not give you false hope, On this strange and mournful day,
When the mother and child reu-nion,
Is only a motion away.


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


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

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


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

Another Issue Altogether

Every now and then, I am reminded that, though the arena of adoption-related activism covers a lot of territory, the fight for justice for the Mothers of the EMS is almost like "Star Wars, I, II and III"...a prequel. Once the industry and our parents and others had succeeded in taking our parental rights, adoption became the issue. We, in that era, did not "place." We did not "make an adoption plan" for our babies. We surrendered and the adoption plan was made by the agencies and social workers. Many of us were just doing what we were told to do, or else, or were manipulated and coerced into doing. There were some exception, but those mothers are the minority and not part of what this fight entails.

Most of the mothers from that era with whom I have talked and exchanged emails did not want to surrender their infants. Some of us tried to fight. Some of us begged and pled. Some of us were beaten down into the pits of low self-esteem. In order, it is said, to "create a family" through adoption, you must first destroy the mother. Well, in my case, they did a bang-up job of that. Thank God, I worked my way back to where I needed to be. It took years but I did it.

It is a good idea to remind folks that we were isolated, warehoused, hidden, shamed, blamed and abandoned by our families and the fathers of our babies while we were being groomed for surrender by the experts. OUR human and civil rights were ignored and violated. Most of us faced the unknown, scary prospect of labor and delivery without a single, caring and familiar face anywhere around. We were given aliases or were not allowed to use our last names. We wore fake wedding bands when we went outside the homes, as if that would fool anyone. We fell in love with the babies in our wombs just like any other pregnant woman. But we faced the birth of that baby with fear and grief.

Society labeled and categorized us. We were either sinning delinquents or psychologically damaged or both. We were fed lies upon lies, like "you will forget" and "having more children will take away the pain" and "THE baby is going DIRECTLY to a good home" and "THE baby will never miss you." Those are just a few of the lies we were told and, desperate for any comfort we could find, we believed those lies. These were adults, "experts," telling us this and we were raised to respect that. Usually the cobwebs were swept out of our brains upon reunion. Boy, were we surprised. That surprise came just before the eruption of suppressed grief, realization and righteous indignation.

We were confronted with the hard and painful truth that our absence in the lives of our children was deeply felt. We saw the damage that could do. We heard their stories, felt their resentment, cried with them and for them and realized that we still have to change the image of the unmarried mother from careless slut to who we really are...every woman....and from victim to warrior.

My girlfriend in SC just reunited with her daughter and, as she went through the non-ID, written by the social worker, she kept saying, "this is bullshit." Mine has just enough truth for me to know it was me, but it was twisted and slanted in such a way as to make it seem that I wanted to surrender my baby.

So, it is from all this and more, that we get our need to seek justice. We were young, vulnerable and what was done to us was done BECAUSE THEY COULD. I am no longer 16. I am 65 years old and I want to hear someone who should say "this was and is wrong," say it and mean it. We are owed something for our suffering and it isn't money so much as it is justice and redress. We paid the ultimate price for any mother...our children. Our babies are gone forever and we can never get them back. We are making relationships with adults..familiar strangers. We look now for respect for our experience and ourselves, and some honesty from a corrupt industry and the government and churches that sanction it. We want adopters to see what their demand for a child created. 

We may not get all we want before I shuffle off this mortal coil, but we can make a lot of people very uncomfortable. The more uncomfortable, I say, the better. From my experience, I would say they earned every little bit of it.

And hear this loud and clear. Facilitators, adopters, PAPs, even our adult children....we will no longer take any crap from anyone without fighting back. You can take that to the bank.

"Them That Has, Gets"

I just love it when something happens to show just how big a farce a supposed representational government can be. I think of ours when I realize that it is the rich and the elite that get the representation and the average citizen or the oppressed pretty much have to fight for themselves. Well, the good voters of Sao Paulo, Brazil pulled one off that is making international news. They elected a genuine clown to congress!. Not only is Tiririca (meaning "Grumpy") a real clown, but he is also rumored to be illiterate. Let's see how common sense measures up to the ideas of the educated elite. And ya gotta love the hat, the smile and the tee shirt.

Tiririca ran on such slogans as "It can't get any worse," and "What does congress do? I don't know, but elect me and I'll tell you." Hey, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert! If this guy can do it, so can you.

We have been decrying the fact that, from Illinois to New Jersey, OBC access bills are being introduced and voted on that are filled with Catch-22's and facetious, invasive, unfair requirements and contact vetoes. It would be so simple to just open the records, make the original birth certificates available (and the amended birth certificates available to natural mothers) and let every one involved deal with it in their own way. But nooooo. This is when Rep.Special Interests steps in and lets us know that the adopted person is still a child, the natural mother is fragile and demented, sure to run to the noose or sleeping pills if she hears from her adult child, and the only people worth protecting in this whole mish-mash are the adopters and the facilitators.

Maybe we should elect Smiling Bob and give every one a supply of Enzyte(tm). I have noticed that, with all the smiling, there is nary a child to be seen. He and Mrs. Smiling Bob are too busy having great sex to be bothered with adopting or bearing children. Something tells me, when looking at the two of them, that they are doing any unborn or adoptable children a biiiiig favor.

It is no secret that special interests and the bottom line grease, not only the wheels of commerce in the US, but also the palms of our elected representatives. While engaging in their own perversions and peccadilloes, they decry the incidence of unwed motherhood as if it is something of which to be ashamed. This way, they get the votes of the churched folks (do you ever wonder how a priest can justify pedophilia while objecting to abortion...?)  who are way more interested in who's doing what with which body part to whom than they are interested in ministering to the poor, the sick, the imprisoned and the troubled. The mentally ill have been turned out on the streets, unmedicated, unsupervised and have become a police problem when they should be the responsibility of a compassionate society. Yet these Scriptural Legalists want to call the US a "Christian Nation." Yeah. Right.

If single mothers and adoptees were the industrial and financial giants, the attorneys who profit or the ones who paid the Industry, you can be damn skippy assured the records would have opened long before now. In fact, there probably would be no adoption at all because mothers would be respected. As my grandmother used to say, "Them that has, gets."

For all the good our votes do, we still have that small bit of power. And it is noted that the 'Restoring Honor" rally, in response to the tea-baggers and Beckophiles drew a larger crowd that Beck did. Why isn't the media making more of a note of that? Hmmmmmm? Them that has, gets.

There are so many good issues getting short shrift out there that ours, justice and openness for mothers and adoptees, is just one in the crowd. We could all try to open our minds....nah, that won't work, especially in Utah. What about seceding from the Union and forming our own country? We could have a purple house rather than a white house, and we would deny citizenship to anyone who wants to let Big Business run things.
The cast of SNL could sit on our supreme court and, unless any candidate could tell a good joke, she wouldn't get elected. Well, I can dream, can't I?

If it sounds like I am totally fed up with the system, the machinations of the Industry and its toadies and the self-entitlement of the self-ordained elite in this country, you are spot on. I am wondering now, about the cost of living in Sao Paulo.

Any place that would elect a real clown to office has got to be interesting, at the very least.

The Drama Of It All

There are times when I think if I hear or see the word "adoption" one more time, I will scream. I don't think there is any other sanctioned, supposedly warm and fuzzy institution in the world that has caused as much dysfunction as adoption, American-Style, and I include organized religion in the group of contenders. To beat that one out for top disruptor of sanity, it has to be bad.

No, we're not all nuts and wackos...just most of us, mothers, adopted people and slavering PAPs and the God-like facilitators. Once I used to worry about whether or not our nation and our world could survive nuclear proliferation and ecological dangers. Now, I just figure that, like the big businesses that pollute, the adoption industry will keep growing and gorging itself on trafficking in human flesh. Its titanic weight will eventually crush the reproductive rights of women and destroy families just as polluting industries are destroying our planet's ecology.

All the pain, anger, frustration, dysfunction and grief have become a way of life for mothers and adopted people. There is always something about our lives that is just a little bit "off," even for the most stable  of us. I have to step back from it at times or I honestly believe I will go under and never come back up. The emotional demands of the situation, the obsessions and fears sometimes are like a tsunami, just waiting to drag you down and keep you there. Hey, it out does any soap opera I've ever watched.

There are people in this muck and mire who will exhaust you with their angst. Reaching out to them is like inviting Dracula in to dine. By the time you can break away, you are drained. There are times when I have wondered if taking up drinking or drugs would help. We can't fix each other, yet I sometimes get the feeling that we are latched on to the idea of being fixed by each other like a leech on a Hippo's butt.

I don't have any answers. God, how I wish I did. For me, using the 12-step approach has, at least, allowed me to retain my sanity. But what we have here, with the aging-out of the EMS mothers, our adult children approaching middle age, is a whole new ball game for the mental health community. Certainly, no one seems to want to do any real, in-depth research that might help the mothers who had their self-esteem put through the wood-chipper or genuinely question the identity issues of the adopted. For some, adoption is a sacred cow and, for others, the goose that lays the golden egg. It means that what research is done by the mental health professionals is done by just a few timid souls who will try to lop off a few diseased branches of a sick tree while ignoring the fact that the roots are rotten. Anyone who really digs in is challenged, vehemently, by the posturing industry and those that industry benefits.

Basically, if anyone sees through the hype and mythology to see the giant cluster-fuck this institution has generated, they are called crackpots and dismissed. There has to be someone, somewhere who will listen and seek answers with an open heart and mind rather than acting as an apologist for the industry that has thrust so many into the maze of adoption confusion. I keep hoping that some brave, highly credentialed,  mental-health researcher with a lot of grant money and a nice-sized staff will jump in and save the day. I can dream, can't I?

Until the hero arrives, we have only each other and ourselves as tools to give us  the best chance of healing. The 12-step program says that when you get sick and tired of being sick and tired, you will do what you need to do to find recovery. Well, I'm sick and tired, all right....tired of the lies, the enmity, the predation, the ones who wallow in their misery and the cause of the misery itself.

I am sick and tired of all the damn drama.

The God That Took Our Babies

His name is Mammon. Webster's dictionary defines "Mammon" or "Mann" as: 1) the false god of riches and avarice. 2) riches regarded as an object of worship and greedy pursuit; wealth as an evil, more or less personified.[1] Winston defines it to mean: 1) wealth, worldly gain; 2) greed for riches; cupidity.[2] Oxford defines: god of wealth, regarded as evil or immoral; 'those who worship mammon' are equivalent to greedy people who value money too highly.[3]

When we were being coerced into surrender during the EMS, one of the most potent arguments the social workers used was our financial situation. Now, I know, for a fact, that this is still used today. Even married women whose fortunes are low are trapped by this argument. In the US of A, it has become most unseemly for the poor to have children. Being poor is seen as some kind of character defect. How could a young girl, not even out of school and still living under the authority of her parents fight that argument? No one told us that there were ways to get help in some states.

I read a lot of good sense in Rickie Solingers "Wake Up Little Susie" which examined the role of race in this issue. I also asked a woman I very much loved and respected, now departed, about this and she was very forthcoming. It seems, back then, in the African American community, surrender was far less common. The way Julia put it, "We figured there was always room for one more, especially if it was blood kin." I only know a couple of African American mothers of adoption loss. Both were from families that definitely could have made room for one more. Mine would have had a tough time but they could have done it.

So our families, many of whom could have made room for one more, used shame, and the "counselors" to which we were exposed used money and our futures to back us up against the wall where we waved the white flag. And behind all that, an industry was growing, attorneys were billing hours working on finalizing adoptions, and social workers were cherishing their new, professional status and increased paychecks. Most of us were were oblivious to the social programs that might have been in effect that could have aided us until we got on our feet. When our hearts ached and our guts churned, the social worker was there with the empty promise that we would "forget" and "go on with our lives."

Years later, as a married woman with one kept child, I was still yearning for the children I had lost. I made a decision to have another child and, right away, the money arguments started coming from my family and that of my ex. We went ahead, anyway, but it made me look at what was really valued. I was watching the family and the bond between mother and child being steadily eroded and the culture of material wealth taking over.

If anyone wants a really scary look at what could happen if this culture, along with the religious right, has their way, read Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale." In this futuristic and cautionary tale, the rigid,  religious conservatives have taken over the government and infertility is a major problem. Any fertile women are assigned to the ruling class families to serve as surrogates, being impregnated by the patriarch while the matriarch held her and watched her husband for any signs of enjoyment. In the story, the ruling class women would even take to bed and simulate labor when their handmaid went into labor. The child was considered the child of the matriarch. The handmaid had done her duty and was retained or recycled to another family. The book made me shiver.

Social engineering is a real threat. The fact that, in the present day, people who are well-off are seen as "more deserving" of parenthood than a young, impecunious and/or single girl is ominous. The bond between mother and child began to lose its value during the EMS/BSE and is still being systematically eroded by the industry. Follow the money. We are seen as interchangeable and disposable by the financially elite.

The current bills being written for OBC access either dismiss the mother or place unreasonable responsibilities on her and invade her innate privacy or both. I say "innate" as opposed to the the fiction of guaranteed anonymity that is used against us and our children. Innate privacy is what should be given to every citizen of this country per our constitution. So, if we follow the money and the social engineering, we not only did not deserve to parent our children due to financial status but we do not deserve the same rights to access to records as our children or the privacy that the rest of the citizenry demands.

I also have to note that the single person, such as a celebrity, with a high income seems to have no trouble adopting. So the old idea that you have to be married is passe'. It's still about the money.

And it still breaks the hearts of mother and child.

Politics, Money and Sex

I am having the hardest the time accepting all the shucking, jiving, bobbing and weaving going on in this country. All the different issues seem to have several different factions, some working at cross-purposes to the other, others floundering in a sea of "experts."

So it seems to be with adoption reform, which is, in my mind, an oxymoron. Adoption needs to be scrapped and something more child-centered put in its place. But, to get anywhere, it seems that you have to get past the Big Three conundrums. (1) Is it politically palatable? (2) What's in  it for me$ ? (3) Is it salacious enough to use?

We no longer have Statesmen...we have politicians. And we all know where sex and money enter in to the equation with them. People don't think they really represent the voters, but I think they do watch the trends and go with what they think will keep them in office.

I have also noticed that, among the far right, we have Capitalistic Extremists. "Money makes the world go around," says the song. Although we have socialist programs already in effect in the US, the CE's will scream, "Socialism!!!" if they see any programs suggested that might help the poor, those needing healthcare, senior citizens and those nasty, old unmarried moms. One nutbar is even suggesting sending senior citizens to the front to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now THAT would help knock down that SSI deficit in a big way.

There is also the continued prurient interest of the puritanical in who sleeps with who and when and where and how. The religious right can't be bothered feeding the poor, visiting the imprisoned and tending to the sick. They are too busy sticking their noses in the nation's bedrooms. Along with the government, they would absolutely LOVE to control our sexuality. I could see them lining up to stone unmarried, pregnant women, UNLESS, of course, these sinners were acting as surrogates for the more worthy.

They are really having to put a spin on all this crap since it is no longer politically correct to place the onus of shame and blame on the single mother as it was during our era. Slick and well-worded is the direction they take. But we who have been there and done that just see that the Serpent is back in the garden and it's carrying a Bible. Christianity, American-Style, is the most unloving, intolerant institution I know and it gets its power from money and lobbying politicians so that they can regulate our sex lives. See what a snarled cord we have in place in our society?

I have a big issue with the "Crisis Pregnancy Centers" that have sprung up all over the country. This is just another version of what we went through, minus the incarceration. To be saved, you have to carry your pregnancy to term, then surrender your child. And don't think for a minute that the good people who staff these mommy-traps really care about that mother. If they did, they would be helping her keep her baby. But then, that might mean she has to accept some public assistance, at least for a little while, and we all know that Good Christians don't believe in taking care of the poorer among us because of the occasional person who takes advantage of the welfare system.

Now, isn't it funny how a post that started off about Politics, Money and Sex, found its way to the topic of Religion? No, not really. Just about every major and minor Christian sect, denomination or cult has played at social engineering and been involved in adoption.

Adoption is a big-bucks business (money), dependent upon that "abstinence only" (sex) thing and sanctioned by the government (politics). It's all fueled by the growing number of people who delay childbearing until it's too late to conceive and/or with other infertility issues and who are somehow convinced that they have a right to, are entitled to, and deserve a child more than the woman who bears that child, Adoption has all the big players in place. That "more deserving" thing comes from the religious ideas that permeate our poor nation. Notice I said Religious...not Spiritual.

My sisters and I from the BSE/EMS are fighting something that we know is huge. Sometimes, it feels like we are dragging bags of boulders up a steep hill. The going is rough and slow and frustrating, at times. But, at least we know the enemy. It comes clothed in greenbacks, filled with political corruption, wearing xray glasses to see into bedrooms and it carries a Bible.

And it is everywhere.