Grandma’s Experiences Leave a Mark on Your Genes with genome regulation and methylation, Why DO People Insist on Believing Things that Aren’t True and how to be heard- aka Online Attack For Choosing Adoption Is Not OK and Ten Things You Didn’t Know About Pregnancy in Prison plus a really kick ass comment!
Sometimes, I literally surprise myself when I say things. I did that while on the show. If you note, I did mention the “skeleton” in the closet in my “before” writing. Rather expected and cliché, I know, but when I took it literally, as a real set of bones, which did mean that something died in the closet; then the visual became, I think, a powerful truth. If there is a real place called the birthmother Adoption Closet, then what really died inside was the mother we were supposed to be before surrendering.
On a day meant to honor motherhood, you can’t help thinking of the one you never get to see. You can’t help missing those who are missing from your life. Mother’s Day, like birthdays and holidays of any sort, become a time to reflect and wonder where your child is and who he honors on that day. Does he think of you? Does he wonder? What is his name and are his eyes as blue?
What: Film Screening of A Girl Like Her” and Discussion with Filmmaker Ann Fessler
When: Thursday May 1st, 2014 at 6:00pm
Where: The Museum of Contemporary Photography (MoCP) Ferguson Lecture Hall, 600 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago IL http://www.mocp.org/events/event?id=257900
Bonus: Adoption Community AND Ann Fessler herself!
At or around age 12, childhood is over.
And for birth mothers, it is obvious that we missed the whole thing. It’s over. Our child is in the final stages of growing up without us. Their whole childhood is gone. They grew up without us. It’s done.
If birthmothers had to be identified all the live long day some people might find the need to pelt us with rocks or at least, if one was ever to take seriously what one reads online, hurl vast insults and barbed comments as we went about our days. I could see a lot of us spending a lot of time in tears because what people say out of fear or weird anger or ignorance or just plain judgment can be really harsh.
If there are other options that CAN BE sought BEFORE adoption, then the adoption itself, not matter how happy anyone claims to be, is a tragedy. “What about the mothers who truly aren’t able to parent?” If we want adoption to really be a good thing, ethical, and used as it should then we have to then ask, ‘What is the obstacle in her way that is making it less than idea for this mother to parent this baby?
I have no use for this thing. Really, he is UNWANTED. So, I am auctioning him off just like a real adoptee baby who needs a real family to love him. I RELINQUISH him, but not playing any games here. Not making this look all pretty with nice bows and rainbows. He goes to the highest bidder. If you want the doll, you got to pay for it.
We all worry. We all fear so much that we will lose what precious little we have managed to obtain, that we are frozen solid in fear. Adoptees, birthmother, fathers, siblings.. all dancing to a song that we don’t known the melody to but desperately tying to sing along hoping we don’t step on another’s toes.
Silence left to its own devices, breed’s silence. So speak and be heard. One word after the next, express yourself and put your life in the context – if you find that no one is listening, be loud.
Make noise.
Often, because I spend much of my time & energy pointing out the negative aspects of adoption, I have been called “anti-adoption”. The very concept of those two words applied together — “anti” and “adoption” — are met with disbelief. But before you are horrified and that title is cast upon my head like a noose, I would like to explain what the words, anti-adoption, mean in my world, You might just find that you agree.
I do not “relax” well. I feel guilty when I am not producing things, making things, painting things, cleaning, things, commenting with a vengeance, writing, building sites, networking, etc. Yet, I have been waking up past TEN FREAKING AM and then staying IN BED until NOON. Yes, really. WTF. And that’s what I was doing on Christmas Eve morning, until, that is, I started crying….
In many ways, you are restarting your life from scratch. You were not a birthmother before. You did not have this child before. Now you do. You are newly born as a mother, as THIS mother, for THIS child and that mother has been relinquished as well. She is gone. You mourn not only your child, but the mother you would have been, the girl who did not live with this sorrow, the woman who didn’t hold sadness in her eyes.
So when you help Cassi be a more successful author by buy “Playing with Fire”, then you put money in her pocket, which in turn, puts money in my bank account, which then allows me to spend more time sitting in fort of the computer all day doing what I do exposing Adoption Truths!
If children are a gift from God then the Birthmother is a regifter!!! Now I don’t know about you, but when you consider adoption to be regifting what God gives you, then I dare say it’s a bit tacky and, again based on my limited churchgoing self, might annoy him when he finds out ( as is unavoidable) that you went and regifted your baby.