So this is a follow up for those who attended my SEO workshop at the American Adoption Congress Conference:
“While the internet has been an amazing tool to bring the adoption community together, there are basic best practices to utilized to really amplify our voices and reach a wider audience. Whether blogging, sharing or tweeting, knowing what Google wants and how to use SEO can benefit us all.”
I mean thank GOD that I had at least a warning that they were going to be there. Can you image if you didn’t expect your agency and they were in your face! They are just lucky that I HAD mentally prepared or the emotional side of me might have taken hold and I might not have been civil and gracious. In fact, the right thing to do on their part would have been to send me a email or note before hand, explaining that they were going to be there for their CEUs and that IF I was open to it, then they would like to take the opportunity to say hello face to face. At least that would have considered my needs and treated me like a valuable person worth of an opinion and having valid feelings. Instead, I somehow feel again like “just a birthmother” whose feelings come last and just don’t matter. That will not work for me anymore!
I felt 100 time “lighter” immediately. I actually DO feel likeit’s over. We have managed to break through the hold and restrictions that adoption has tried to put on our mother son relationship and it can’t do any more damage, Adoption, as a real threat to me and my son, is done. It’s over. It cannot hurt us anymore. The adoption industry might have tried and maybe it’s not the way I wish it had been, but that just doesn’t matter anymore because we are OK. Our connection is still there and we value it and it works.
The three judges, two women, one man, sit behind what looks to be a cherry and oak huge bench. This bench crosses the whole length of the room, separating us and the lawyers, from the judges, from justice. I really just want to cross that divide and just be able to sit with these folks, who I see as just human beings, and tell them what has been going on in this little boy’s life. I want to plead with them to please do the right thing and make this family whole again. But the “process” means briefs and files and wait times and others who posture and dance, more hurry up to deadlines, and then wait wait wait, more wasted time, lost forever, wasted by this unethical adoption agency, in this baby’s life.
More Garbage the Pretends to “Save” Babies; There is an amendment comin’ down the pike that will make it even more difficult for a mother who may have relinquished her infant under Illinois’ Abandoned Newborn Infant Protection Act change her mind and get her child back. And will codify that the child will have a foundling birth certificate.
Please share your challenges, problems, solutions, and experiences IF your relinquished child has lived with you again post adoption reunion? Or better yet IF you are an adoptee who did move back and live with your original family, what worked? What didn’t? What did you need that you didn;t get or wish had happened? And yes, please use the gift of hindsight to apply to your lessons learned!
Going back to Boston feels like going back to time. I feel like all these parts of me are swirling together but it feels good. It feels, I think, like it is supposed to. I look around my office, my house, my window, my street. I think of my home, my family, my husband, my children, my friends, my neighbors, my colleagues. I am just so beyond grateful for being here now.
Is it weird to dance and cry your face off because you are just relieved that you are actually happy?
Help Missouri Adoptees
It is URGENT that Adoptee Rights supporters come out in full force Monday March 16th. This is the hearing for the agency bill HB1112, and we need to show strong opposition. We need to gather anyone who can be there IN PERSON to support HB647. They don’t all have to speak, and they can be friends, neighbors, co-workers whoever can fill seats on our behalf.
A Positive Change Brought about by the Justin Harris Mess; HOUSE BILL 1648 PROHIBIT PRIVATE TRANSFERS OF ADOPTED 9 CHILDREN EXCEPT TO RELATIVES If HB 1648 is passed, then Adoption Rehoming in Arkansas will be a felony!
The simple fact is that we CAN do this. And it is becoming more and more clear that we MUST do this. So if you are at all interested in actually DOING something to really help preserve families, support successful parenting and provide a viable option to a unplanned crisis pregnancy and avoid adoption, PLEASE join this list.
So if out of the 14.1 billion is 100% of the revenue, adoption’s 8.2% equals $1,156,200,000.00 in revenue and out of the $380,900,000.00 in profits, adoption’s 8.2% portion results in $31,233,800.00.
Now this “adoption” category does includes both licensed agencies and unlicensed facilitators that arrange adoptions, but does NOT seem to include the attorneys and legal fees.
So REALLY if we want to sound like we know what we are talking about then Adoption services by agencies and facilitators ALONE are supposed to bring in over 30 MILLION dollars in PROFIT in 2015.
I feel blessed and honored to have been included in the filming of this piece.
The last day of the AAC Conference in San Francisco last year, I heard Jean wanted to film some birthmothers and I volunteered. So we sat in a room and talked about our experiences relinquishing our children to adoption.
Then Jean Strauss worked her magic and this is the end result
When a man fathers a child and chooses, for whatever reason, to ignore the existence of that child, do we respect his wishes overall and grant him his right to his anonymity? No.. so why do mothers receive this “protection” ? Why are we ONLY concerned with the mothers? If this fear was legitimate, then wouldn’t it be fair and expected to extend that concerned to the father’s as well? Should not all people be protected, then, from long lost relatives that might infringe upon their lives and seek out relationships with them?
The simple fact is that these “negative” feelings about adoption DO exist and are VERY REAL. And while I understand that society and the media and the adoption professionals have not prepared you for this, if you are choosing to enter into the world of adoption, you actually don’t get to pick and choose a version of reality that you like best. Again, you can choose not to listen and hear them, but it’s all still here. We are not making this stuff up.
One of the housewives, Lisa Vanderpump, adopted her now 22 years old son, Max, from foster care. And in between some party prep and cat fights, there are two scenes in this episode dealing with Lisa and Max who is “suddenly” interested in doing DNA testing for his genetic heritage.