My First Adoption Conference

After getting no sleep last night, the alarm screamed at me at 5:30 and I struggled in the darkness to begin my day.

I had a 6:30 bus to get on and a conference to make by nine am in NY. While beyond tired, I was excited. Yes, I “know” tons of natural moms on the internet, but I have only met one that I know of in real life, my one friend Merridee, who I can sit with and have a drink and a cry. My Adoption.com friend SouthernRoots was coming our from California for this conference and as of Monday, with that knowledge, I decided to go at the last minute. We were gong to get French Chocolates for lunch. Perfect day!

Once on the bus, I set out to sleep. I awoke in New Jersey when the sun started to shine all too brightly in my eyes and NYC was on the horizon. It was at this moment that I recalled WHO would be at this conference. The man who I was googleing just the other night, Adam Pertman, because he is the senior advisor for the PBS Adoption Documentary..this week’s peeve. Aha! Went my still sleepy brain. I would talk to the man myself. What a concept.

Arriving in Port Authority is not usually a nice experience, but I quickly got a coffee in hand, a huge much needed coffee, and walked out onto the city, my city. I probably looked like such a nut, standing in front of nasty Port Authority, with my crazy red hair and my huge FAUX fur lepoard coat, having my coffee and my morning cigg, huge smile on my face, greeting my city. God I just love NY. With my nicotine in system, I took the next taxi in line and gave the driver the address of St. Bart’s church where the conference was to be held.

Adoption in New York- I Always Return

Though close in distance, the landscape of NYC that was before me was seeped in memory of the the conception of my Max, and the emotional distance went back legions. Down Madison Ave, just out of view, was the office where I had worked for his father, where he still worked, and here is the Palace Hotel where we had drinks the night the affair first began. These were the streets I walked once still not scarred, these were the streets that I hid my growing belly on to oblivious people passing me by, these were the streets where I panicked in silence, my thought echoing my footsteps..”what are you going to do? what are you going to do?”

Well today, I was going to a conference, and while triggered, I was feeling elation. Today, I was in a way, claiming back what I had hide. Just down the street, I could speak the truth. Not to him, yet..though the thought was in the back of my mind, but I would speak in his backyard.

I arrived before Southern, and retrieved my name tag. The small auditorium was quickly filling and the squealing happy hugging sounds of people recognizing fellow travelers on this life’s path rose above the lower murmurs of those making first introductions. As sometimes the God’s make it easy, I sat in front of two women and we got to chatting. Two other mother’s of adoption loss who happen to also live in my neck of the world! Ah, there IS a face to face group in New Platz! How many times have Merri and I pondered how we “can’t be the only ones in the Hudson Valley”. Yeah, I came to find and see my NY breathern.

Southern arrived, and we greeting like long lost friends. She is the first internet person I have met in real life. I was so excited about meeting her, my second face to face real natural mom friend, that I had almost overlooked the obvious.

I was surrounded by my kind.

Welcome Home; My First Time in AdoptionLand

Here we all were, speaking the same language, same lost hurt in our eyes, knowing souls. When I was younger, I use to attend Rainbow Family Picnics and Gatherings. As one arrived at a Rainbow function, the others would call out “Welcome Home, Welcome Home!!!” It was an overwhelming feeling of acceptance and safety and belonging. I felt that today again for the first time in a long time.

My soul cried “welcome home”.

I was concerned going into this as it was in a church, but that really didn’t color the venue except to supply very beautiful architecture to glaze at. The first discussion was on Loss and Grief and many times I cursed myself for remembering an umbrella ( didn’t need it) and gloves ( didn’t need them either) but neglected to bring tissues..could have used a few.

It is one thing to read another’s words and feel their emotion, it is quite another to hear one speaking their own words and see their emotion. It is very moving and very emotional and I highly recommend it.

A Continued Struggle; The Adoption Silver Lining

At first, the “unspoken theme” of loss and grief seemed to be that while it is real and we need to feel it, it brings us to a better place. I kinda have a had time with that. Talk of “naming” our feelings to work them though is just a bit too logical for my taste. Thinking that the silver cloud of losing Max was that I was a “person of great depth now”, had found my voice, begun to write..was still not going to be enough.

I can see the good things that are in my life now, but do not have to tie them into Max and adoption. I think I would be deep and loud and write now anyway. It’s part of me. So is my son and I don’t like thinking that I had to lose him and get un-whole to become whole. Nah…so I got worried about how the day would go..just a little bit.

An Amazing Betty Jean Lifton Quote

God..so much happened, I can’t begin to cover it all. Some of the speakers were really really great. Betty Jean Lifton and Ricky Solinger…OMG, just incredible. Betty Jean has a voice like caramelized honey, aged whiskey, smokey and raw. She was speaking on reunions and I had to write down the quote as it was just so powerful to me…paraphrasing, but on the concept of doing your own person growth work before engaging on a search and reunion..if you don’t do the work first before hand:

 “then your arms are holding in your trauma, and you can’t reach out and hold the other person“.

Can you see wisdom when it enters a room?

Ricky Solinger is just powerful and amazing. How many ways can I say incredible?
Also impressive was Madelyn Freundlich who had a sweet voice with a lovely lilt and spoke so well on the the UN Rights of Children which has not been ratified by ONLY the US and SOMALIA. Elegant truth, scary.

Ugg..I can’t, I won’t speak of it all. It is impossible.

The First Time I Met Adam Pertman

But I will tell you of Adam Pertman.

He looks like Dustin Hoffman. Like really, really looks like Dustin Hoffman. Not a huge man at all, he spoke on the last panel. There were time for questions from us folks in the audience and though there was much I could say after all four panel discussions, I waited and bid my turn for him. I will admit it, I wanted to dislike him. I really tried to…he was my prey. When he spoke of his older son, as an adoptive father in open adoptions, and did get teary and emotional on stage, I wanted to doubt him and it as a carefully produced tear jerker moment and a man who used emotion to instill trust. He is a man, he is an adoptive father, he is head of the Evan B Donaldson Adoption Institute, he wrote a book celebrating adoption, he speaks well of open adoptions, he has power, he makes money from this, I inherently distrust him. I got up and in the mic, told him that I wanted to hate him. That he scares me. That I am angry that my picture has not been posted. That I want to know, as head of the advisory committee for the PBS special, will it be propaganda?? Will open adoption be sold as the groovy bandaid to make it all great? Will the real stories be told?

And this is what he said:

He promised to do the best he can. He has no idea what this documentary will be like. They haven’t started it yet. It will be real and truthful or his name will not be on it. He said that Eric Strenge will text me back. He said that my picture should be up.

I spoke to him afterwards alone too. We talked more. He knows our stories exist. He made me feel like trusting him. He looked me in the eye, acknowledged that adoption sucks and that open adoptions still hurt. Told me to email him. I will personally email him a whole bunch of times and tell him where we are too. I found myself wanting to like him, wanting to talk to him, wanting to help him “get this right”.

Call me a fool, but when the devil looks like Dustin Hoffman, is shorter than me in heels, and says the right things…I’ll dance with the devil for a while. This PBS thing can be huge..yeah, I’ll dance.

ETA: I find this very amusing that I have documented my first awareness of Adam Pertman. I did actually call him the “devil” and I really did want to hate him. For the record, I do not hate Adam Pertman at all. ( I even re designed his Blog when it got corrupted by a nasty spam virus)  Over the years we have actually formed a relationship that is built on mutual respect, a shared desire to improve understanding and adoption practices, and dare I say, friendship. While I do know that many folks still do not trust Adam, I have to say that I do. I like him as a person and I find him to be a good ally. He knows I called him the “devil”; we laugh.