“Are you currently grieving the loss of an infant?”
Why YES, Miss O, as a matter of fact, many of us ARE.
Now I know that she is not really looking for stories from us birthmothers…and yes, indeed she shall probably ignore us, like she does. I mean, we have all hear now about the “O” magazine peice where there are three adoption stories..all supposedly well done..( I am repeating info..haven’t read them myself) BUT yes, indeed she has forgotten the mothers. AGAIN.
And I know many of us have written to her before, and been ignored…
Oprah Ignores Birthmother’s Stories
But she is ASKING this time!
Now I know she is asking for infertility and still born stories..and I don’t mean to smarf all over their chance to get heard. So nothing personal here ya’all. This isn’t a grief contest, just a chance too for us birthmothers.
So, if you could please…I doubt it matters where you are or if you could or want to really BE on the show ( since I don’t see that happening anyway)..lets ALL just fill out the forms as moms of loss.
Lets show the O that we are HERE..and we have stories and issues too..that we LIVE, that we exist.
Fill it out. Go clicky now and fill it out.
Come on..I double dog dare you!!
I wrote this:
“I lost my five day old daughter to adoption when I was eighteen years old. It felt like I was living a prison sentence not knowing where she was all those years. After I found her I felt like I could breathe again. Adoption loss the worst kind of infant loss, we are not allowed to grieve, we are not acknowledged as experiencing any kind of loss. Even in the wording here we are not given a voice.
Adoption loss is the most painful of all infant loss.”
I wrote to her a few weeks ago asking her why she doesn’t give mothers like us a voice.
Don’t get me started on that smarmy Dr. Dill….
The current incarnation of Oprah as Goddess is different from her former self. I have a tape of one of her shows from about 15 years ago (or mroe) with an audience full of adoptees and first moms and it kicks ass. She stays a bit noncommittal, but nothing like she is today.
I will write to her also. I cant wait to see you on her show, (sending energy to the universe here)
Kim
Dr Dill? hmmm I have always known him as Dr ill, as he preaches adoption to the masses so…..
MSP
I lost my son at 2 days old, to adoption, the grief that followed was not only unbearable and lasted till reunion 18 years later and beyond, the fact that it was not talked about, made it all the more painful.
We mothers have been writing to you for years and it seems you don’t want to listen for what ever reason, but please if you want to talk about losing babies, then we must be included in that topic.
Oh, god, I hope she doesn’t plan to have infertile women on! Being infertile has nothing to do with “losing a baby”.
Claud I wrote to both Oprah and Montel Williams just this past December to ask them to do a show about child abuse and child welfare, abusive adopters, and those that foster, the list of dead, tortured and battered children, and the ongoing horrors of the CPS system in the United States and CAS here in Canada. Not a word from them period, none what so ever. I even invited them to visit Suncana In Memory, yet no word at all.
It seems to me that child abuse to these people is only ever at the hand of natural parents, not anyone else. Just them, not those who adopt, or those who foster.
It is part of the reason why Mom’s are hated, the perception that has been taught to all of society about natural parents. You are all child abusing monsters as has been taught to society (which is untrue) and adopters and those who foster absolute saints that can do no harm.
It is bullshit, all of it is. The whole industry is. Child abuse and the industry is why thousands of children are taken needlessly every day – to be placed for adoption. As there are actual cases of abuse systems allow thousands of children to be taken for the adoption industry.
That children are being sold for $60,000 a head in the United States, and as much as $30,000 in Canada is a disgrace. I don’t believe in a triad, I used to but do not any longer. You don’t buy someone else’s baby for any reason to me anyway. And the fact that children are being sold in the first place should prompt more outrage.
Triad activism is not progressive to me, as there is no triad – not when one side has all the power and the other two nothing at all.
The glorification of adoption, and the notion that people are forever safe, when they adopt is also a huge factor into why so many children have been beaten, raped and tortured by their adopters, and worse killed by them.
I wrote to Oprah and Montel Williams to burst this ridiculous illision, as if just one person could get there head out of the sand about adoption for three minutes or more, and start questioning those who adopt and what they are doing I truly believe the mounting list of dead (murdered by their adopters) children would not exist.
Child abuse has no borders, and can never be restricted to just one group of society. That is my message, and my battle right now.
Not all adopters are abusive, but many have been and are. Society needs to know this, for the sake of children. This two tiered if you are blood related you are a monster, and unrelated a virtual saint crap needs to end in adoption.
Why more people are not angry about this escapes me. We should be angry enough to speak out about it. For the latest horror story type in Eunice Spry for the UK articles, about the nightmare from hell and what this woman got away with. It might wake people up enough to stop glorifying a system that answers to no one, that is full of lies, human rights violations and illegalities.
Oprah and Montel are asleep to me about any of this. They must be if they can actually read the stories on Suncana in Memory and ignore this issue.
Not only have they ignored this issue, far too many people do in general as well.
Every time I mention it the only people that attack me are adopters, the hate mail, the attacks only from them. Only ever from them in even mentioning the abuse in the first place.
Oprah and Montel and Dr. Phil are all contributing to this abuse as well by glorifying adoption to audiences on mass, while totally ignoring the very real and horrible issue of adoption and abuse. Their callous disregard to this issue, blatant silence about it, and refusal to ever speak about it tells me that they are so married to the adoption industry they too must have been bought and sold.
Thanks for letting me vent here about this, your experience with Montel really hammered home for me how bad the media is with all of this.
All of them continually discuss child abuse, and I have no problem with that – but all of them continually ignore child abuse in adoption.
Anne Patterson
i wrote this to oprah:
“talk to moms who have lost their children to coerced adoption”
This is what I submitted to Oprah’s site:
In 1980 I was 17 years old, a high school student who intended to go to university and become a computer programmer. I was also pregnant.
I was given no options other than adoption, even though I wanted desperately to keep my baby. I was never told about welfare. The social worker stressed that being raised by a single mother would damage a child, and my parents told me not to be selfish.
As my pregnancy progressed, I was in a state of shock and numbness, not knowing what to do.
When I went into labour, my parents drove me to the hospital and left me there. I was put into a storage closet on a stretcher for the night, presumably as there were no beds available.
My labour was 18 hours, and when I delivered I was in skinny delivery table, strapped down prone, with feet up in stirrups. I was nauseous from the medications they had given me, petrified and disoriented. A 4″long episiotomy was cut without anaesthetic, and my baby was born. A sheet was held up in front of my face so I could not see him. No contact was permitted and he was whisked out of the delivery room before I could even hear him cry (I assumed that this was standard procedure for all mothers — not realizing that it was just standard for unwed mothers!).
Put into the genecology ward to recover rather than the maternity ward, he was never brought to me to care for. I was not allowed to see him until about 4 days later when I could finally walk and asked the nurses if I. I painfully walked down long corridors, to the other end of the hospital, and nurses hovered around while I was allowed to look at him for a few minutes. I was then shown back to my room. The social worker, probably called in by the hospital, came and brought papers. There were no options. There was no choice.
Twenty-seven years have passed. I found my son seven years ago. But the pain has NOT got any less. The grief, pain, loss, and horrible flashbacks have almost ruined my health and I cannot work full-time any longer.
This is the pain of adoption, the reality of adoption. Almost all natural mothers want to keep their babies. Many consider suicide from the pain and grief. It is unending, as there is NO closure and thus NO resolution of the grief. At least with death, there is closure. Even the deaths of my brother and father do not come close to the ongoing and never-ending pain of losing my son.