“Hole in My Heart” isn’t light reading, but it is compelling and necessary. Perhaps it is best described as s strong dose of medicine; a strong antidote to adoption mythology, and a injection of raw honesty wrapped up in a riveting story of a life uncommon to most, much like a spoonful of sugar. The truth goes down smooth leaving needed ethical questions emerging as an aftertaste.
By Mirah Riben Be kind to your web footed friends, For that duck may be somebody’s mother She lives in a hole in a swamp Where the weather is always damp My thoughts and prayers this Mother’s Day 2015 are for all the mothers, including those who do not always – or ever – get thanked, remembered or even thought of and those for whom the day holds sad reminders….
By Susie While wasting time on Facebook the other night, I kept seeing a link that several different friends had posted about a Teleflora commercial that had left them in tears. It left me in tears too. But for reasons unlike my friends. Especially during this month of May, that includes not only Mother’s Day, but also Christopher’s birthday. What a kick in the gut. This wonderful son, grown up…
The official and infamous Crack Whore Birth Mother t-shirt is leaving AdoptionLand forever. Say goodbye. It has served its time, turned some heads, had its day, but that time is over.
I have to say quite clearly; Birthmother and actress Kate Mulgrew’s new memoir “Born with Teeth” is NOT an adoption book. It’s really a memoir of an actress who is a birthmother. The adoption story part of it is very true to the experience and very real, very raw and one will find themselves totally “getting it”. There just isn’t nearly as much “adoption” as one might think based on the press coverage. Like she really goes into way more and, in some ways much deeper and better, with the interviews. Granted she does write about the relinquishment, but after that, until the VERY end, it’s more of an undercurrent of sorts that doesn’t really get addressed all that much, but referred to in passing. If you are looking for birthmother validation, then you might be disappointed.
I mean thank GOD that I had at least a warning that they were going to be there. Can you image if you didn’t expect your agency and they were in your face! They are just lucky that I HAD mentally prepared or the emotional side of me might have taken hold and I might not have been civil and gracious. In fact, the right thing to do on their part would have been to send me a email or note before hand, explaining that they were going to be there for their CEUs and that IF I was open to it, then they would like to take the opportunity to say hello face to face. At least that would have considered my needs and treated me like a valuable person worth of an opinion and having valid feelings. Instead, I somehow feel again like “just a birthmother” whose feelings come last and just don’t matter. That will not work for me anymore!
I felt 100 time “lighter” immediately. I actually DO feel likeit’s over. We have managed to break through the hold and restrictions that adoption has tried to put on our mother son relationship and it can’t do any more damage, Adoption, as a real threat to me and my son, is done. It’s over. It cannot hurt us anymore. The adoption industry might have tried and maybe it’s not the way I wish it had been, but that just doesn’t matter anymore because we are OK. Our connection is still there and we value it and it works.
By Mirah Riben In a public hearing before the Assembly Institutions, Health and Welfare Committee on Adoption, December 9, 1981, in Trenton, New Jersey, attorney Harold Cassidy made the following impassioned plea: There is a need for us in society to learn to know the women who have come to call themselves ‘birth-mothers.’ They are women who know that a child is part of his mother forever… They know the…
Please share your challenges, problems, solutions, and experiences IF your relinquished child has lived with you again post adoption reunion? Or better yet IF you are an adoptee who did move back and live with your original family, what worked? What didn’t? What did you need that you didn;t get or wish had happened? And yes, please use the gift of hindsight to apply to your lessons learned!
Going back to Boston feels like going back to time. I feel like all these parts of me are swirling together but it feels good. It feels, I think, like it is supposed to. I look around my office, my house, my window, my street. I think of my home, my family, my husband, my children, my friends, my neighbors, my colleagues. I am just so beyond grateful for being here now.
Is it weird to dance and cry your face off because you are just relieved that you are actually happy?
The simple fact is that we CAN do this. And it is becoming more and more clear that we MUST do this. So if you are at all interested in actually DOING something to really help preserve families, support successful parenting and provide a viable option to a unplanned crisis pregnancy and avoid adoption, PLEASE join this list.
Looking for examples of experiences where a hospital nurse directly interacted with a mom and in some way pushed an unwanted opinion on adoption. Whether or not this opinion resulted in a changed outcome isn’t as important as what was said, how it was said and how it made you feel.
I feel blessed and honored to have been included in the filming of this piece.
The last day of the AAC Conference in San Francisco last year, I heard Jean wanted to film some birthmothers and I volunteered. So we sat in a room and talked about our experiences relinquishing our children to adoption.
Then Jean Strauss worked her magic and this is the end result
By Susie This is a re-post that was originally published on June 14, 2012: I stumbled onto the writing of Dabeshim a couple of days ago. One of his poemscaught me from the very first stanza. I again am amazed at how the words of someone adopted can be so meaningful to me as a mother of adoption loss. Below is the poem, interspersed with my own rambling thoughts brought…
When a man fathers a child and chooses, for whatever reason, to ignore the existence of that child, do we respect his wishes overall and grant him his right to his anonymity? No.. so why do mothers receive this “protection” ? Why are we ONLY concerned with the mothers? If this fear was legitimate, then wouldn’t it be fair and expected to extend that concerned to the father’s as well? Should not all people be protected, then, from long lost relatives that might infringe upon their lives and seek out relationships with them?