So while dealing with mothering obligations and major house construction ( did I mention we built WALLS where there were none?), I got word that the piece I had written moths ago, was scheduled for publication in the SUNDAY New York Times!
WHO: Riverside Community Care After Adoption Consulting and Training and PACT (Pre/Post Adoption Consulting and Training)
WHEN: June 23, and June 24, 2013
WHERE: Provincetown Inn, Provincetown, Massachusetts on Cape Cod
BONUS: Joyce Maguire Pavao
These stories are not isolated. Various members of the adoption community have created vast clearing houses of these images on the many social media sites form Facebook, to Pinterest, to Tumbler where they are tweeted, shared, and hopefully, maybe, find their way to the one person who could provide clues about their origins. We tirelessly share and promote our fellow Adoptionland members and pray that they find those whom they seek. There are over a hundred images like this with the numbers growing daily.
WHO: PACT: Inside Out Adoption and the Mixed Roots Foundation
WHEN: Sunday, March 10, 2013 10:00am until 6:00pm
WHERE:American Red Cross Center, 712 5th Avenue, San Rafael, CA 94901
WEBSITE: Inside Out Adoption
BONUS: Make it an Adoption Weekend! Go to PACT’s Adoption Conference on the Sat and this on Sun!
All these years have passed in a blink of an eye. It really does not seem that long ago. Growing up in Utah; the year is 1988. I am trying hard to remember my son’s birthday. Gasping at the thought I could have forgotten it. This has to be a temporary block. I close my eyes and take a deep breath. Picturing his little plastic wrist band from the hospital neatly placed in a little silver cardboard Nordstrom jewelry box. It is hidden somewhere with my life’s collection of furniture and house hold items in a lonely storage unit. I focus in on it and it comes back to me. I know for sure it was 1988 either March or April. The 18th of April stands out the most. No, I remember it is March 18th 1988. Yes, his Birthday.
WHO: PACT: An Adoption Alliance
WHEN: Saturday, March 9, 2013 – 8:30 p.m
WHERE: Head Royce School Campus; 4315 Lincoln Avenue, Oakland CA 94602
WEBSITE: PACT.org
BONUS: Joyce Maguire Pavao AND Brenda Romanchik are keynotes!
Adoption Ark and Christian World Adoption have both announced they are closing their doors and filing for bankruptcy in the span of one last week. Even Chuck Johnson, CEO of the National Council for Adoption, said he expected that many more agencies would be closing. Burn, baby, burn!
I was alerted the other day that Missouri has new adoption legislation in the House of Representatives. While we like to see adoption laws updated, there are a few issues with HB 252. While the contact preferences for OBC access are often included in any Adoptee Rights legislation in order to make the legislators feel warm and cozy, allowing one party to deny another their legal documentation is not treating ALL adoptees equally.There is also a portion of the bill having to do with Open Adoption Agreements. In essence, the issue is not that they are saying that there can be enforceable open adoption agreements, it is in the enforcement aspect that the language gets a bit too vague.
This is one of those times when I am asking for your help on a project. It was barely two weeks ago when Facebook started exploding with the Adoptee Searching Picture memes. Though I know we all tried to keep up and share like crazy cakes, it’s proving to be a difficult task! I was trying to share all the images of Adoptees begging for help finding their families, but I quickly had the longest blog post on the east coast. And then, I remembered Listly!
For an adoptee searching to find their family, DNA testing can be really helpful. We talk to Adoptee Richard Hill, author of Finding Family: My Search for Roots and the Secrets in My DNA and an DNA testing expert about the the best to use this new technology to help answer the age old question ” Who am I and where did I come from?”
The justification of adoption relinquishment was out in full force. You would think with all these people caring about her making the “right” choice, there would be more cries of concern questioning these adoption practices that pushed the known boundaries of even the most common adoption industry tactics used to separate mothers and children. How can she be “brave” if we don’t really even know the first thing about this girl? If her earlier, now removed tweets, were any indication upon the thought patterns of her choice, she was obviously immature and acting like this whole pregnancy was about as exciting as a trip to Disneyworld.
Basically I did what my mother told me to do. I took her choice and made it my own. I trusted her judgment and followed it implicitly. I bought the big fat lie about adoption and gobbled it up as if it was the way and the truth and the light. I didn’t look back. Sure, privately I thought about my daughter. I missed her. I prayed for her. I hoped her ‘Disney’ family was everything it was promised to be. When someone asked if I had kids my reply was, “No, I’m not married yet”. I stuffed my feelings down so far I didn’t realize they were there. I didn’t realize that I was suffering. I still bought that adoption was a good thing for my daughter. And that basic premise was ludicrous.
Learn About Adoption & DNA
WHO: The Franklin County Genealogical & Historical Society DNA Interest Group with Richard Hill
WHEN: Wednesday, March 20, 2013 – 6:30 p.m
WHERE: Columbus Main Library Auditorium – 96 S. Grant St., Columbus OH
WEBSITE: Franklin County Genealogical & Historical Society website!
EMAIL: TFCGHS@gmail.com
Follow your state group on Facebook and Twitter or sign up for their mailing lists and when they ask you to do something, just do it! Send your letter, make a comment saying you did, and share the post to your own networks, The only way we will ever restore the civil rights of our friends and children is if we work on their doggedly and with purpose together.
The latest batch of pro-adoption propaganda, “What’s Mine is Yours”, by Katherine Nelson and Deanna Harper, has set a “beautiful” song that highlights the pain and suffering of infertility while promoting adoption and glorifying relinquishment. But with this song and the simplification and romanticism made of the relinquishing mother, Katherine Nelson leaves out millions of real mothers who have suffered a real loss of living, breathing children, many now gown adults. And often this trauma was inflicted by the hands who those claim to want others to understand; women who should be able to appreciate the true longing to be mothers. She promotes a false cure, a band aide, in adoption, by glorifying the very need that claimed so many of our children.