Well, here it is again....

Mother's Day. And "Birthmother's" Day. The second one I refuse to be part of. I never was a birthmother, I will always be a mother. Thankfully, this weekend doesn't carry the pain that it used to. The memory of that pain is still buried in the recesses and it gets easier over time to keep it there and not let it cloud the time I spend with family.

There are defining moments in our lives and those moments have a profound affect on certain holidays and celebrations. There was life before Liz and then life after losing Liz. There was life before reunion and life after reunion. Of course there were other defining moments such as the births of my other 2 children and they affected these same celebrations but for now I'm just talking about the life altering event of losing a child.

Life before Liz.....
Mother's Day for me was spent pretty much the same way as any other average kid growing up - shopping for a card, trying to come up with something different for a gift, a special church service to honor mothers, going somewhere special to eat.

Life after losing Liz and before reunion.....
Mother's Day became a day of strained relationship with my own mother. Searching for a card was no longer easy. The sentiments expressed no longer fit for me. If I were to give them I would feel like a liar. Honoring her as mother became difficult because my own motherhood was not only not honored, it was hidden and denied. I think I spent the first post-adoption Mother's Day in a fetal position. I remember lots and lots of tears. After the births of my son and youngest daughter, I could accept the many well wishes of family and friends. I could smile and feel the love of my husband and children but there was always a little girl in the back of my mind. Where was she? Who was she calling "mom"? What were they doing on that day? I thought of her every day of the year but certain days meant those thoughts were in the foreground every moment, coloring a grey veil over what should be a happy time.

Life after reunion....
The day became easier with my own mother. We've made some peace and done a lot of healing. This week my sister and I took her out for a nice dinner and we had a great time.
I am truly one of the fortunate mothers of adoption loss. Now on Mother's Day I can think of my daughter and smile. In fact I'll be talking to her shortly. She'll tell me about her life and what's happening with my grandchildren. I'll tell her about my life here, about her sister and brother, nieces and  nephew. We won't be together because we live in different states but we're in each other's thoughts and can call or text and send virtual hugs. It's taken a while to get to this point because just like other relationships, it takes time to get to know each other. The pain of pre-reunion Mother's Days is almost gone. I don't think it will ever leave me completely. Now what comes up is more the anger at being forced to wait 2 decades before being given the chance to get to know my own daughter. So even now, after reunion, adoption plays a part in the day. The experience of adoption for the mother and the adoptee is part of us always.

For the mothers who are still in the - life before reunion - stage....
I know how painful this weekend is but don't lose hope. You are a mother and there's always a chance that you'll be able to celebrate your motherhood with your son or daughter. My thoughts are with you. Much love and hugs.



photo credit: wallpaperpin.com

The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking and the New Gospel of Adoption - A Must Read!

It's about coercion, deception and adoption culture.
I'm not done reading this book but I have to share it anyway. I do believe it's a must read for anyone who is thinking of adopting, thinking of relinquishing, has been adopted, knows someone who adopted, knows an adoptee, knows a mother who lost a child to adoption, interested in the history of adoption, basically anyone and everyone in the United States should read this book. It should be required reading.... period.

Kathryn Joyce brings us the history and the very current state of the adoption industry in The Child Catchers.  As a mother of adoption loss it's a difficult book to read but a fascinating one. Not all of the information contained in the book is new information to me, I've read and learned about some of this before but when put together in the context of adoption's history with what is going on right this minute, and viewing the timeline of a business, it is astounding! And it makes my blood boil.

Here are just a few of the sections I highlighted in my Kindle version. I'm finding so much I want to highlight I might have to buy the actual book so I can really use a highlighter and make notes.

Despite the varied but largely altruistic motivations of evangelical adoption advocates, as a movement it is directing hundreds of millions of dollars into a system that already responds acutely to Western demand- demand that can't be filled, at least not ethically or under current law. What that can mean for tens of thousands of loving but impoverished parents in the developing world is that they become the supply side of a multi-billion-dollar global industry driven not just by infertility but now also by pulpit commands.

"If you want to look at what's wrong with international adoption, state adoption, and Christian adoption," one agency director told me, "it all has to do with how they treat birthmothers. The common denominator in all of these is that the birthmother is invisible." When you get that, one adoptive parent wrote, it changes everything. Or, as another told me, "It's like the Wizard of Oz. You open the door and either you have to accept it's a house of cards or you stay in denial. There's absolutely no middle ground."

At the local level churches report a "contagious" spread of "adoption culture" that inspires fellow congregants to adopt, with even smaller congregations witnessing as many as one hundred adoptions in just a few years. Often parents adopt multiple children, and many adoptive families swell to eight or ten kids or more. The growth of adoption in churches is so rapid that it's led some Christian leaders to muse that church planters - Christians who help establish new, franchise-like branches of a church community- could build congregations this way.
The viral effect is intentional. Addressing an audience at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 2010, the ABBA Fund's director of ministry development, Jason Kovacs, had counseled the crowd that the key to building a church-wide "adoption culture" is to "Get as many people in the church to adopt, and adopt as many kids as you can." He added that they should also "Pray that your pastor will adopt," noting the precedent a pastor can set.
One result has been the creation of "rainbow congregations" across the country, such as Louisville's Highview Baptist, where movement leader Russell Moore, author of the 2009 book Adopted for Life: The Priority of Adoption for Christian Families & Churches and a leading Southern Baptist theologian, is a preaching pastor. There, with the help of an active adoption ministry, members of the church have adopted some 140 children into the congregation. At a ceremony to celebrate them, Moore recalled, Highview's many adoptees toddled onto the stage with flags from their home countries. What brought Moore to tears was realizing that "most of the kids didn't recognize the flags they were holding but they all knew 'Jesus Loves Me'".

There is so much more to this book. I will post more as I get deeper into it but for now, if you want to read about the history of adoption and the current state of adoption in this country, then this is the book to read.

On this day....

On this day, 33 years ago, my oldest child was born.

On this day they hid her from me.

On this day, for 22 years, I cried.

On this day, for 22 years, I made a wish.

On this day, 15 years ago, I baked a birthday cake and started the search.

On this day, 10 years ago, we shared her birthday for the very first time.

On this day, today, I have my beautiful daughter in my life and I can smile.

Why would anyone choose that?

Yesterday I saw yet another story of a young man who decided that dying was preferable to living because being gay in our world was too much for him to bear. Every day gay and lesbian teens and adults are bullied, insulted, beaten, ostracized, shunned and shamed by their friends and families and yet we call it a "chosen" lifestyle. Why in the hell would anyone choose to live a life like that? Why would anyone choose to be brutalized by society and it's attitudes? Why would anyone choose to be treated as less than a person worthy of respect and dignity? I didn't choose to be heterosexual. I didn't just wake up one day and decide hmmmm..... men or women? I think I'll like men today. It's just who I am so why is it so hard for others to understand that being gay isn't a choice either. The pain of being treated with such disdain for simply being who you are must be terrible. I imagine, for some, the pain of hiding and not living an authentic life eventually becomes greater than the pain of being open and honest about who you are so it then becomes time to let people see the truth regardless of how those people will respond.

This brings me to adoption and mothers of adoption loss. A comment on one of my recent posts was...

"How can anyone believe that we would have knowingly and willingly signed up for this?"

So the same questions I asked about being gay could be asked about mothers who surrender babies for adoption. We supposedly made a choice, right? Why in the hell would anyone choose to live a life like this? Why would a mother choose to live without her child? Why would she allow strangers to raise her baby? Why would a mother choose to be brutalized by society and it's attitudes? We were treated as less than people worthy of respect and we still are in many circles. How many times have we seen comments from people that tell us that we deserved to lose our children because we didn't keep our legs closed? How many times do we hear that the "birthmothers" must have been drug addicted, she probably didn't even know who the father was, if she keeps the baby it'll just end up in a dumpster or in foster care. How many women would go into a so-called open adoption knowing that the adopters could close it at any moment, knowing that they could suddenly be shut out of their child's life for a minimum of 18 years? Why would anyone choose that and why is it so freakin' hard for people to understand that we didn't? Why can't they understand that expectant moms still really aren't choosing it?

I hear and see people all the time talking about the horrible pain of a disrupted adoption, how awful it is to lose a baby that they thought they were going to adopt. Everyone consoles them, tells them how sorry they are and how they're going to pray for them. What do they do then? They get over it fairly quickly as they move on to the next available adoption situation baby as soon as one is presented to them. At the same time there's the adoption agency telling pregnant women that if they love their babies, they'll give them to strangers to raise. I was told I would be selfish if I kept my baby. Aren't women still told this very same thing when they're strongly and repeatedly encouraged to do the "brave and loving" thing? Pregnant women aren't told about the lifelong grief they'll experience because then they're not likely to sign up for that. Instead they're told that they'll be sad for a while. I was sad for a while when my cat died. I can tell you that being sad for a while isn't even in the same universe with losing a child to adoption.

Pregnant women aren't told about the likelihood of adoptive parents closing an open adoption. They aren't told that the open adoption agreement isn't legally enforceable. They aren't told that their child may suffer from feelings of abandonment regardless of how loving their adoptive family is. They aren't told that there are no guarantees that the baby's adoptive family will remain intact, or they won't have financial problems, or won't have substance abuse problems, or won't abuse their children. Of course they're not told any of these things because then, why would they sign up for that?!

They say (before the adoption consent form is signed) that "birthmothers" are brave and selfless. We weren't brave, we were beaten down. Today mothers aren't being brave, they're being coerced. Later when a mother wakes up to what happened to her and her baby and she finally understands that she was exploited for the sale of her infant, she's called bitter and angry if she dares to speak up. Sorry, no consolation or empathy for you. Her voice is shut down. She's banned and blocked from public forums because the general populace doesn't want to hear it. Too many mothers are still hiding from the shame that was imposed on them. They not only have to face their past but then they have to face what people will say about them now and in the future.

As more people come out of the closet, whether they be gay or mothers of adoption loss, the more our voices can be heard. If we get loud enough, maybe, eventually, some minds will be opened, some hearts will find compassion and we can end this tragedy known as infant adoption.

Insert Baby Here

I set up a Google alert for "infant adoption". Today a new one came in. I know this has been talked about many times before but for some reason this one just irritated me more than usual. I won't post the link here because I don't want them to get the attention but it's for a couple who struggled with infertility and have now gone to "plan B". We all know what that is... infant adoption. In order for that to happen they've set up a page on a crowd funding site.

On the site they posted a short video showing them with their dog, showcasing their hobbies like putting together a jigsaw puzzle and playing air hockey. They also listed their expenses for the hoped for new addition to their family....

A Homestudy $1,500-2,000
Agency Fees $10,000-20,000
Birth Mother Expenses $1,000
Attorney Fees $1,000-5,000
Travel Expenses $500-1,000

In addition to the list of expenses that would be required for buying a baby, of course there were the usual wedding photos and "see how much we love each other" photos. The one photo that got under my skin was the picture of the two of them pretending to hold an infant. They're both cozy on the couch and her arm was bent as if holding a baby, he was sitting beside her with a baby bottle in hand as if feeding the infant in her arms. A word bubble over head said... "Insert Baby Here". I just don't know where to go with that. I ended up thinking of ads for other products so I did a Google search for that advertising term, that use that technique to sell an idea. What I found was anything from green roofing solutions to art and creativity to pornographic images. I'm not only disgusted and angry, I'm sad. I'm sad for this couple because they feel such a need to be parents that they would resort to this. I'm sad that they won't even consider the option of foster parenting or mentoring a mother so she can keep and raise her own baby. I'm sad that we have an industry in this country that encourages this behavior (of course they do, it's for their bottom line) and exploits these couples for tens of thousands of dollars. I'm angry that there is an industry just waiting to exploit a mother so they can "insert" a baby into that scene. I'm angry that human beings are treated as products that you can just "insert here" for the benefit of others.

Overall, I find crowd funding in adoption offensive but so far, this one takes the cake.

Please Wait

I've been thinking a lot about birth. My daughter just gave birth a couple of weeks ago. This is her first child and my fifth grandchild. I got to spend a few days with them at home, helping her around the house while she recovers. I watched her deal with the emotion of postpartum living, the extreme emotional ups and downs of becoming accustomed to being 2 separate beings as opposed to one connected. Living pregnancy and delivery is an emotional roller coaster and it's understandable considering what a woman's body must go through. When we have a new mom going through the early days of motherhood we want to be there for her, support her, understand her, help her. My daughter has a wonderful husband, friends and all of her family for support. This is the ideal for having a baby yet she still has to cope with the hormone changes that come with being a new mom. These moments can be hard.

So what about the women who don't have the ideal situation? They may be single or in a bad relationship, they may lack resources or information about where to get resources, they may not have family support. What they need is someone by their side to help them find what they need. They need an advocate, someone to tell them that they can do it and help them find out how they can raise the baby and be ok.

But what does the adoption industry do? They actively look for young women who don't have these ideal circumstances and uses them for their gain. They literally spend millions of dollars in this active search. If a business (that's what it is -a business - it certainly isn't some benevolent organization with a mission to help people) can spend millions looking for the source of it's products, then you know they're making many billions on the sale of the products. Instead of seeing an opportunity to help a young mother get on her feet and care for her newborn, they convince her that she's not good enough for her own baby. They use the postpartum hormone changes against her by insisting that adoption consent forms must be signed within days of giving birth. Many times she hasn't even left the hospital yet. Seeing the emotional roller coaster that is postpartum life in the best of circumstances makes me even angrier at the system that coerces women in this way. The fact that they push her to sign so soon after giving birth is, in my eyes, nothing less than evil.

If you're considering surrendering your child to adoption, PLEASE WAIT! There is no law, in any state, that says you have to sign a consent soon after giving birth. A consent can be signed at any time! Wait at least 6 to 8 weeks. Give yourself time to heal. Give your hormones time to level out. Give yourself time to meet your baby and discover what it is to be a mother. You have to know who you're giving up before you can sign away your rights. No matter what an agency or a prospective adoptive parent says, give yourself time with your baby before making a truly life altering decision. Think about you and your baby's needs, not the wants of the PAP. Talk to other mothers but not just the ones that the agency wants you to connect with. Seek out people who are not connected to the agency in any way. Don't solve a temporary problem with a permanent solution.

It's been 27 yrs for me since I gave birth to my youngest daughter but watching her now with her new baby reminds me of what it was like after the births of my children and just confirms my commitment to stopping this business of using woman as breeding machines for money.

Random thoughts on thankfulness......

Memories. A lot of them have been flooding back recently. Last month one of my Facebook friends  mentioned a folder next to the messages Inbox that said "other". I didn't know that this folder existed. It was there but I never noticed it before. I decided to check it out and see what was in there. It said I had 99+ messages. Most of them were from pages I had "liked" or people I had some kind of connection with. What possesses FB to just randomly dump messages into another folder? I don't know but it pissed me off! As I was scrolling down the list I discovered a name of someone I hadn't seen in 33 years. The message was sent to me over a year ago and I'm only now seeing it. That's just plain wrong. Facebook was mucking about in my personal life. Ok, yeah, I know it's free and I do love FB. I'm just grumbling because I've missed out on a full year of communicating with this person because THEY decided that the message belonged in "other".

Anyway, this is someone I dated, in what seems like eons ago. He doesn't want to hear that it's decades but it actually is. If you've read my blog from the beginning then you've probably figured out the timeline. My daughter is 32 years old. No it's not my daughter's father, it's someone I dated shortly before meeting my daughter's father.We had dated when I attended our community college, before attending art school. He moved away and the romantic relationship ended but the friendship didn't. This is someone who was there for me when I had no one else. This is someone who, upon finding out about my pregnancy, asked me to come visit him so I could get away from the situation for just a little while. He was someone who cared.

He was attending a very conservative school at the time. He was concerned about what I was going through and not about what other people would think of me being there - in my very pregnant condition. He was the opposite of what I was dealing with. I was about to lose my firstborn child because of what society and the "neighbors" would think yet, there he was, doing his best to make me comfortable no matter what anyone said about him. There was talk I'm sure. I figured the rumor mill was working overtime. I worried about what people were saying about him. I stayed in the girl's dorm during the week of my visit. The looks I got! Omg...you'd think the devil had moved to town. Did it faze him? No. He didn't care and that's exactly what I needed at the time.

He said to me the other day that he worried about me after I left from that visit and he wished that he could have done more for me. I don't know what that would have been. Some would say that a 22 year old college student doesn't know much about the world but from my perspective now, he knew a hell of a lot more than the adults around me did. He knew about the need for living in the moment. He knew about living for what's important and not for what other people think of you. He knew about the importance of connections and family. He knew what it meant to be there for someone.

My connection with him didn't change the outcome of the situation, I still lost my daughter to adoption but that was certainly not from any lack on his part. It pains me to think that he would feel any guilt or responsibility for the situation. As a matter of fact, I think at that point Catholic Charities had already gotten me to sign the adoption consent. They had me sign a consent for adoption when I was only 6 months pregnant - illegal, by the way and not just by today's laws. He did his best to help me and I will always love him for that. My point is... there are people in your life that you should cherish. There are 2 men in my life who understand me more than anyone. One was there for me when I was pregnant and the other was there for me after I lost my daughter. Both of them are cherished. Both of them mean the world to me. The first one was in my life for just a brief moment in time and now has another life, a life he loves and I'm so happy for him. I'm fortunate that I get to share part of that life again thanks to the internet. Ok yes, thanks to Facebook even though they pissed me off.....  The second one is the man I married. We've been married for 31 years and thanks to him I'm relatively sane :) Thank you to both of them. I don't know that surviving the loss of a child would have been possible without them.