Sunday, November 01, 2009

Time to Honor and Remember


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.




I came up with the name because certain lyrics from Paul Simon's "Mother and Child Reunion" resonated, so deeply, with me. Today and all through the coming month, Mothers of adoption loss will be wearing our ribbon badges of black for mourning, red for anger 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. I find it appropriate that it falls on a Sunday, this year.



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 and through the coming week, as we approach 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 not my choice or 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, the dark underbelly of the adoption myth.



Happy Strange and Mournful Day, Sisters. I'll be wearing my ribbon every time I leave the house until this heinous month is behind us.

5 comments:

maybe said...

Thanks for continuing to fight for justice!

Triona Guidry said...

I am thinking about you and mothers like you (including my own) on this sad, strange, mournful day. Thank you for fighting for the rights of those whose lives have been impacted by adoption.

Unknown said...

Hi Robin,

Thank you for your thoughtful and enlightening blog. Thank you for speaking up for mothers. You speak for my mother every time you blog. Strangely I am in Sanford for the month of November, visiting my sister and shooting a documentary on adoption. I would love to talk to you about your story if that's possible. I hope to hear from you.

Robin said...

Hon, I would love to talk to you. I have enabled my email addy to be on my profile, so email me and we'll set something up.

Cedar said...

Great post, Robin! It is truly sad that there is a whole month devoted to celebrating the destruction of families, including ripping infants away from perfectly capable mothers and convincing them that it was "their choice" when in fact in many cases they are left with NO choice. No-one sees violence when it is perpetrated on a mother by government policies that violate and trample her human rights.

I posted a photo on my blog, of something that means the world to me -- an e-card from my son. To me, what he wrote exemplifies how wrong adoption was -- that he had to spend spend 20 years separated from his family, his mother, not knowing his identity, is truly a tragedy.