June 2014

A 1966 Era “In Family ” Adoptee Looks Back on Childhood and Reunion and Says…

I am an adoptee given up by my birth mother in 1966. I was adopted within the family, so grew up with my biological grandmother, aunts, uncles and cousins around me. I was raised being told that my mother was my “Aunt Annie”. My adoptive parents (aunt and uncle, whom I called mom and dad) were terribly insecure and once the secret was out that I knew “Aunt Annie” was no aunt to me at all, my adoptive parents became extremely controlling about my access to and communication with my birth mother.


Birthmother Wars; When the Positive Fight the Negative

“This Support Group is SO Negative!”

Lately, it seems that someone who feels “Ok’ about their choice, will express displeasure at what they see as lack of support. Which pretty much ends up being another long drawn out discussion where the Polly Positives complain about the Negative Nancys and the Negative Nancys defend their right to be negative. Rinse, wash, repeat.






Supporting iReunion

If you have ever searched, then you know that the numbers of “online adoption reunion registries” is daunting. There is no lack of places to look through or to register with, but many are outdated, cumbersome and really NOT searchable. There comes a time when one must say “it’s time to build a better mousetrap”. Enter iReunion. iReunion is a new adoption search and reunion that is an App based program designed to search FOR YOU! Once you register and if no internal match be found, the software will search web-based sources for a potential match. It will actually network with over half a million other registries beyond the internal listings. It searches 24/7 on your behalf and gives you back any potential matches.


Addressing My Racist Contributions to the Birthparent Activist Panel

When I really look at my own attitudes towards racism, then I am no different than the white adoptive parents who refuse to see the racism that their children experience because they are also “not racists.” Just because a person refuses to see it, doesn’t mean it is not there and, in this case, doesn’t mean that they can’t blunder into it. In fact the refusal to even think about the impact of my own words because I was so above it meant that I did, in reality, contribute. I can’t even say it is a silence that created my complicity, but a refusal to even consider the possibility that made it possible.