I put the wings on they gave me
Woven of diaphanous words
“Gift giver”
“Selfless”
“Angel”
They kept me aloft for awhile
Where I hovered above my son and his family
Their voices murmurs far below

“Yet whether it was an accident, ambivalence, or a careless mistake, it’s always the woman’s fault. She allowed herself to get pregnant. She couldn’t keep her legs closed”

Other women, other mothers, who have faced the surprising results on the dreaded “pee stick of doom”. But it’s not about adoption, it is in support of parenting, and parenting young. Rolling with the natural and biological results of sex, accepting a pregnancy before it’s time and the battles of birth control, but most of all the judgment that society, often other women, thrust upon us for daring to get pregnant in the first place.

They agreed to send updates (letters and pictures) every 6 months until she turned 18 and kept up with that until about 3 years ago when the updates suddenly stopped. No explanation, no warning, nothing. The updates were being sent to me through CHS so I called the agency and got the run around. This, to me, is one of the most heartless and cruel things that can be done to a Mother and I’m in utter shock that this is actually happening.

And like many of us affected by adoption, for a spouse of a birthmothers, it helps just to know that one is not alone, which is then altered with the desire to help others also feel that validation and acknowledgment. I do infrequently run into other spouses that wish there was more public support. Perhaps one day we will have something really good for you all. Of course, we’ll have to make it ourselves. The adoption industry probably never will, as then they will have to admit that adoption has long term affects on behalf of relinquishment.

We make it out the double glass doors and I burst into hysterical tears. Not weeping, not crying, but gut wrenching hysterical deep soul crushing sobs. Rye looks at me shocked, I am beyond all logic. I make it about ten steps to the car, and then turn around….sobbing, tears flowing down my face, I am not sure what I said. It was like I had stepped on an emotional land mind and now all this shrapnel of myself was just flying.
I had no way of knowing it, but when I had to leave my “baby” cat behind and walk out that door without turning back..I hit that place that every relinquishing mother fears. It really was an emotional land mind that exploded when I walked out that door. I wasn’t crying over the cat, it was over Max…two days old. It’s no one’s fault that this experience reenacted the worst trauma of my life, but it did. Just ripped that scab off with such a force, that it took me hours to find the place to stop the bleeding.

It doesn’t get miuch better than this. I’m in the middle of family building lifetime memory making week. The “kids” and I are down in Orlando, Florida for the rest of the week. I am over the moon with silly gidiness as I have been

I did not know Alyssa Toner. What I do know, though, is that Alyssa was searching and cannot finish her search. She made the video, but it does not show up in searches for her birth date. The article about her adoption birthmother search does not seem have been published. The news stories about her death, do, right now, but as time passes, news articles like these get achieved and fall way down on the search rankings. Maybe her search will be forgotten completely. Maybe her account will be taken down, the video eventually deleted and, if her birthmother ever does decide to search, she will never find anything at all.

The message will be lost.

So while dealing with mothering obligations and major house construction ( did I mention we built WALLS where there were none?), I got word that the piece I had written moths ago, was scheduled for publication in the SUNDAY New York Times!

All these years have passed in a blink of an eye. It really does not seem that long ago. Growing up in Utah; the year is 1988. I am trying hard to remember my son’s birthday. Gasping at the thought I could have forgotten it. This has to be a temporary block. I close my eyes and take a deep breath. Picturing his little plastic wrist band from the hospital neatly placed in a little silver cardboard Nordstrom jewelry box. It is hidden somewhere with my life’s collection of furniture and house hold items in a lonely storage unit. I focus in on it and it comes back to me. I know for sure it was 1988 either March or April. The 18th of April stands out the most. No, I remember it is March 18th 1988. Yes, his Birthday.

I do not believe that we will see the end of adoption completely, but these solutions could very well produce a country like Australia where the relinquishment rates dropped about 95%. That is not unrealistic to me. Ideal, yes, but… People will want children that they cannot bare, and here will be people who have children who do not have any desire to ever be a parent. Yes, adoption will still be there, but let it be a safe guard that provides families for children who need homes rather than finding children for families that want them. Adoption relinquishment should be seen as the last possible choice.

I really have to almost get a chuckle out of it when people try to tell me to shut up. Really? You are going to tell ME to STOP? And you think I will listen to YOU? How’s that working out for you? Yes, it IS FUNNY! You did not bother to find out who you are talking to. I take my rabble rousing VERY seriously. Why are you spending all your energy trying to convince me that you got it so good and adoption is so positive and “not like my experience”. Did I mention that I just do not care?

No matter how perfect the outcome, it still hurts. The only way to avoid the hurt is to avoid adoption, and it’s too late for that, for me. The adoption of my son was perfect, I did everything the “right” way and still; the adoption of my son caused unnecessary pain and was wrong. This is way I speak out against adoption today. It’s not because I had a “bad experience”, it’s that it was a “good experience”, and yet there are too many tears and the worry never stops.

If you don’t believe in abortion, then don’t have one. I promise I won’t force you, but please don’t force my daughter to feel shame or cross state lines for wanting to control her fertility. Don’t give our countries women fake choices and then blame them and shame them for doing what they must. Don’t make them endanger their lives or be slaves to their bodies. Don’t let sex become something only the rich deserve. Don’t feed the adoption machine at the risk of women’s lives. You decide your moral code for your body and I will decide the moral code for my body.

So, the patter was 30 years old, but just this past Thanksgiving we had a 24 pound bird on it. Yet, this past week, just a mere two days after my new anger directed towards my mother, it broke. It didn’t break due to someone dropping it, or banging it or anything logical like that. Nope, it SHATTERED in MID air as Rye held it. With our much desired dinner on the floor, he was shocked. He didn’t drop it; literally disintegrated in his hands. My immediate thought was that my mother did it.

What strikes me now is that clearly, from the letters, one of my major concerns is what would I do afterwards, where would I go, how would I survive and that my mother’s home was an unsafe place for me to be. Like really, for my mental health, my mother was damaging to me and returning home after such a loss, I would be even more venerable, but yet.. they sent me back there after I had my baby.
They gladly took my child to protect him, but then left me right back here I was. How is this looking out for my best interests?