By Susie I ordered the new adoption memoir “A Life Let Go: A Memoir and Five Birth Mother Stories of Closed Adoption”. As I was reading the reviews for the book on Amazon, I found my breath taken away by one of them. One sentence in particular: “…true story of a pregnant teen hiding in the house, frozen and blind to all possibility beyond invisibility, as a baby grew in…
By Susie I’ve seen this before. From a speech given at the first American Adoption Congress in Washington, DC. It’s not that I agree with every word that makes it hit home especially hard. It’s the date that this speech was given. May 4, 1979 Just four days before Christopher was born. Just four days. Four Days I had no idea… I was not indifferent. My son was NOT…
LONG LOST FAMILY, the TV documentary series for TLC that aims to reunite family members, is looking for participants. The show is based off a UK version and is made by the “Who Do You Think You Are” folks.
By Laura Marie Scoggins When I received my original birth certificate from Ohio, one of the first things I did was show it to my adopted mom. We ended up having one of the best conversations about my adoption that we’ve ever had in my entire life. It was a healing conversation. It was like the whole thing coming full circle. The conversation made me realize a few things. 1….
By Laura Marie Scoggins Many adoptee bloggers begin by telling their own story. Maybe they are in the process of searching and chronicle unfolding events. Sometimes they are like me and begin writing the story years after the reunion has unfolded. My biggest advice to someone going through the search and reunion process is to start a journal and record everything. It doesn’t have to be a public blog, but…
The arrangement Search Quest America made as Troy’s third party search provider started in 2008 and ended in early 2014. According to Troy, he has not charged anyone for doing a search since 2002 however he did receive compensation from Search Quest America as his third party search provider. This arrangement ended after the website traffic leads were diverted to his “Troy Alert” app and the requests coming in through the TroyTheLocator.com website dwindled.
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.
By Mirah Riben In a public hearing before the Assembly Institutions, Health and Welfare Committee on Adoption, December 9, 1981, in Trenton, New Jersey, attorney Harold Cassidy made the following impassioned plea: There is a need for us in society to learn to know the women who have come to call themselves ‘birth-mothers.’ They are women who know that a child is part of his mother forever… They know the…
By Laura Marie Scoggins Today is Independence Day for Ohio adoptees. Today is the day that 400,000 Ohio adoptees from the closed records adoption era are finally allowed legal access to their original birth certificate. Records for adoptions before 1964 and after September 1996 were not sealed, but for those of us adopted during the years in between our records were. Today we finally have access to those records. I…
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?
By Susie Most of the stories you see of adoption reunion in the media are just sort snippets in time ~ the moment that family members see each other face-to-face for the first time since birth. How happy and exciting it all is. Those short snippets don’t show what happens in the time after the first emails, letters, in-person visits. Reunion was life changing for me. There are still times,…
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.
By Laura Marie Scoggins In all of us there is a hunger, marrow-deep, to know our heritage-to know who we are and where we have come from. Without this enriching knowledge, there is a hollow yearning. No matter what our attainments in life, there is still a vacuum, an emptiness, and the most disquieting loneliness. – Alex Haley, Roots It was a cold January day with snow on the…
Looking for examples of experiences where a hospital nurse directly interacted with a mom and in some way pushed an unwanted opinion on adoption. Whether or not this opinion resulted in a changed outcome isn’t as important as what was said, how it was said and how it made you feel.