The offending contest over at Circle of Moms was closed down.
This appeared on the website:
After serious consideration, we have decided to cancel our Adoption Blogs by Moms – 2012 contest. Our Top 25 program is meant to celebrate, connect, and support mom bloggers. Following some feedback from participants in our 2011 contest, we decided to make this year’s Top 25 more inclusive. In doing so, we unknowingly stepped into a very sensitive issue and debate, and we apologize to all the moms who have been offended, no matter what your position on adoption is. We’re committed to finding a way to give all parties in the Adoption Triad a voice on Circle of Moms. If we run a Top 25 Adoption Blogs in the future, we’ll consult with mom bloggers in each part of the Adoption Triad on how to create a supportive contest where all bloggers would feel welcome and respected by Circle of Moms and by all participants. We appreciate the time and energy every participant put into this contest during the past week, and we sincerely regret that we can’t reward those efforts in the way we had planned to when we launched the contest.
We will be closing the contest at 3pm PST today and all blogs will be removed from the contest page.
Sincerely,
The Circle of Moms Team
Is this a victory? It feels like a victory. In some quarters there is the feeling that this statement is code for we will continue in the same old way. I hope not. I’d like to think not. Maybe I am naive and overly optimistic. This is always a possibility. I will wait and see. It’s making me think about this post of mine. Maybe I should add it to the UM Highlights page. Right after the one about Nietzsche.
The email informing Adoption Truth blog that they were being removed from the contest was alarming. I was naive enough to be totally surprised and shocked at the blatant censorship. But as my Irish grandmother (and my son’s Irish great-grandmother) used to say, “It’s an ill wind that doesn’t blow somebody some good.”
I have no doubt (but no absolute confirmation) that the decision to remove Adoption Truth from the contest was made as a result of complaints from adoptive parents. They have long controlled the narrative and who gives up control without a fight. But I am hoping that some people, inside and outside the Circle of Moms, learned through all of this that there are other voices out there that deserve to be heard, those of adoptees and first moms. And that those voices will be heard whether you try to shut us down or not. The tone of those voices is all over the spectrum, some are angry and reasoned, some abusive and reasoned, some are calm and reasoned. But all have the same message. There is another side to adoption and you need to hear what it is.
In fact, there are many sides/aspects to adoption. We all deal with the personal impact but most of us, as we come out of the adoption fog, have also come to realize that part of what we need to do is educate.
If you would like to read one adoptee’s journey out of the fog and on to something greater, go and read The Declassified Adoptee
Well written and thought provoking. As always. Really, go and read and learn.
A few months ago, my son woke up and decided a really good thing to do would be to go on Twitter and trash his mother. Not the other mother, the amother, but this mother, me. At the time it happened I had had no involvement with him for almost two years, not since the last time he decided to trash and accuse me (and his father) of things – although that time it was to my face, more or less, via email.
As things sometimes pan out, when he decided to Twitter-trash me the universe had my back. A friend discovered what was happening. I used to have my UM Twitter feed appear on this blog. I guess he found the address there. She got a new follower and somewhat uncharacteristically checked him out. To her surprise, she discovered many, many tweets about me. And they weren’t very nice.
She had faith in my intestinal fortitude so she let me know. I went in and read a few things. Checked out who he’d followed from my list – a few Moms, a few adoptees. From what I saw, same old stuff. I got in touch with the people on my list and I forwarded the link to a few people who knew what had been going on with him for a few years but hadn’t ever seen it live and in person, as it were. Then I decided better to just let it go.
However, that was not to be. The responses I got back from the people I sent the link to were a bit worrisome. For example:
“My heart aches for you.”
“I started to cry when I was reading this.”
“OMG, are you alright?”
And from the less reticent – “Fuck him!”
This made me think perhaps I ought to check this out a little further. Without reading, I printed them up.
Twitter
There were six and a half pages.
That is a lot of talkin’ trash about me over a couple of days at 140 characters a shot.
But even though I had the six and a half pages in my hand, I still was not going to read. That honour fell to, you guessed it, my husband. As I told him, I don’t want to read these but I think somebody should. My husband is the most objective person I know. Annoyingly secure, as I tell him frequently. So he, who has never demonstrated anything but kindness to my son, read and reported back. Told me about the things he’d said. Same old stuff but a few new wrinkles. The tweets started two days before what would have been the 24th anniversary of our first meeting in 1987. Our reunion fell apart on his birthday in 2005. I stopped talking to him in 2009 because he just kept attacking me and twisting everything that I said.
Armed with these six and a half pages of tweets, I thought about what to do next. I seriously, and I mean seriously, thought about putting them in an envelope and mailing them to his adopted parents or the companies he does business with or some of his friends. I thought of sending one of the six pages to him with Really? written across it. But I only thought about doing it. I didn’t do it.
I can’t help wondering if someone is encouraging him to think and act the way he does. Maybe its his adoptive parents or one of their friends or a happy adoptee girlfriend. Maybe one of those adoption hearts and flowers therapists. Or maybe he is doing it all on his own. Who knows.
I only read three tweets myself but they were a pretty good example of what I am talking about.
In his very first tweet he talks about how when he came here to meet me for the first time, I dragged him around like “some kind of trophy.” Of course, I would say I was proud of him and wanted him to meet all my friends, welcome him to my life, treat him like a member of my family but I guess I was wrong.
In another, he refers to my daughter as his “half-sister.” She was born after I met him. She never thought of him as her “half brother” just her big brother. No one in our family has ever thought of him as half an anything. He is my son. He is her brother. She was very hurt the first time he vanished from all our lives without any explanation to any of us. Insensed, that anyone would even ask him “Why?”
And finally, I read a comment on my morals. Or lack thereof. According to my son, my morals are no better than his father’s (???) because I admitted that in 1978 when his father unexpectedly showed up where I was attending law school, he put the moves on me and I was tempted. Sometimes I think adoptees forget or don’t realize there was a living breathing relationship involved in their arriving on the face of this earth. But that is another post for another day.
Sure I was tempted. But his father was married and so was I. And even though my husband was living in another city and I had, as the cops would say, opportunity, that didn’t change the fact our son had been given up for adoption. No thanks. Not interested in picking up where we left off and acting like nothing had happened.
But am I confused here? If you are tempted to do something that you probably shouldn’t do and you don’t do it, isn’t that a good thing?
In my view, anyone who would do this has a great desire to hurt and humiliate (read shame). Shaming – That’s adoption old-school. Most of us gave up that one when we decided to come out of the adoption closet.
When my friend (and fellow blogger) found the tweets for me, she asked my permission to do a post about it and she did. With my agreement she didn’t identify me at the time out of respect for my privacy. It was all pretty new and raw. That someone was directing that much anger at me, particularly someone who is my son, was upsetting. I’ve never had that happen in my life before. But something always felt not quite right about the non-identification of me as the recipient. Like I did have something to be ashamed of.
He wrote me a very nice New Year’s message once, a few years before the trouble started. In it he praised my honesty and integrity. He said my daughter was a testament to these qualities in me. He said I was the only one of the parents who was totally 100% honest with him even when that was a difficult thing to be.
To be fair, I should say the tweets were taken down but nothing is ever completely gone on the internet. Those six and a half pages of tweets I have tucked away should be made available to anyone who is thinking about giving a child up for adoption. Just to let them see the anger.
On November 30th I am going to write about what I got out of blogging everyday. I can tell that among other things it has brought a change in my feelings toward him. As people are fond of saying, you can’t control other people or what happens to you, all you can control is your reaction. I worry about him. I still think probably we shouldn’t be talking to each other but he is my son. I care what happens to him. I hope he is doing well. I hope he has gotten in touch with what is really bothering him.
Well, talking about 1978 and me being busy defending my virtue has made me think about the lyrics of this song. I’ve always liked it. Too bad it wasn’t around ten years earlier, in 1968.
A little over the shock of yesterday. My dog goes in for surgery tomorrow so please think positive thoughts.
If Our Mothers Had Blogs…
I am speaking here of the mothers of the mothers of the adopted. I got to thinking about this when I read over at Joy’s Division about the adoptive mother blogging on behalf of what appears to be an adult adoptee.
If there is one thing that adoptees and Moms agree on it is the fact that adoptive parents have been treated as the voice of adoption for too many years. That bothers us. They are, after all, the people who have benefited from adoption the most. They have not lost anything in adoption; they have gained everything.
In the blog that Joy refers to, the aMom conducts an interview with her adopted daughter. Adopted daughter says all the right things. How adoption has had no impact on her life and how she is happy to have been adopted and has no interest in finding out anything about her family of origins. My son used to say that any adoptee who says that is lying. I have no idea what he would say now but that is what he used to say.
I suspect that in some a parent circles, this kind of a response is a badge of honour. “Our Katie has no interest,” they tell their friends. “Only unhappy, messed up adoptees search, and that certainly isn’t our Katie.” The implication being that we have done our job right. “And we are so thankful because who knows what poor Katie might have found.”
I always suspect that these are the same aparents that will say they have always been supportive of a search but the kid wasn’t interested. Perhaps not really interested or perhaps the kid is no dummy and gets the subliminal message. Searcher = ingrate, disloyal adoptee.
These were the aMom’s questions for her daughter.
I asked her if being adopted had ever been a hindrance to her in any way, “No”
Was it ever? “No”
Do you wish, or have you ever wished you weren’t adopted? “No”
Have you ever wanted to search for your biological roots? “No”
Why mother started speaking about adoption I don’t know. It seemed a propos of nothing, given what the rest of the post was about: Her daughter trying to win a singing contest. Maybe it was just her way of taking out the big stamp that says MINE!
So to go back to my original point, this got me thinking, what would my mother have said if she was out here in the blogosphere and writing about me and adoption.
Q & A
Mom: Is giving the baby up for adoption having any negative impact on your life?
Daughter: No
Mom: Did it ever?
Daughter: Oh no.
Mom: Do you ever wish you hadn’t given the baby up for adoption?
Daughter: No
Mom: Have you ever wanted to search for the baby you etc., etc.
Daughter: No
There is a danger when one group of people who have no understanding decide to speak for another group who lives with the issues.
If my son found my parents first instead of me he would have been told that I was happy, I had no interest in digging up the past and he should go home and honour the excellent adoptive parents that had no doubt been chosen for him.
The Q & A is imaginary only because my Mom doesn’t have a blog but the content and her speculation about the answers is not imaginary. That is what she believed or wanted to believe.
The truth, of course, lay elsewhere.
Peace
UM
** For new readers, I am working through the letters in these words as my writing prompts during NaBloPoMo 2011.
I’m back but before I start, I want to thank Suz Bednarz of WritingMyWrongs for guest non-blogging/posting yesterday. Great post!
Now back to our words. We are on the first letter of word three.
R is for the Right to…
The first time I heard the words I was at theatre festival meet and greet. A play that I wrote had been accepted for production and the playwrights, directors and producers were introducing their work to the other participants. One of the directors got my attention when she got up and said “This play is about who has the right to raise a child.”
To me, that was self-evident. The only people with the “right” to raise any child are its parents. In some cases, sadly, these rights are terminated and someone else may become involved. In the case of adoption, the mother signs something to say she is relinquishing her rights. To me, parents rights came first, end of discussion.
The play was a two hander: An infertile woman and a somewhat clued-out child/woman who was pregnant. The play was about who was better for this unborn child. It’s own slightly clued-out child/woman mother or the extremely accomplished (slightly high-strung) infertile woman.
Poor C-O’d child/woman! The deck was really stacked against her. She was young, she was poor, she came from a troubled family. I think she’d even dropped out of school. She road her bike aimlessly in circles on the stage. An outward manifestation, no doubt, of her general aimlessness. She hadn’t really thought too much about what she was going to do with this baby once it arrived. SHS infertile woman, on the other hand, had had the nursery planned and the furniture bought for years.
I mean really. Whose side would you be on?
When I tell people my adoption story many people say I should write a book. I’ve never done that. I don’t think a book with a neon MESSAGE! MESSAGE! sign all over it is a very good book. And I think it would be hard to write any other kind. You have to be very careful to make your point without having the reader feel they have been beaten over the head with a polo mallet. (Okay – I see all you people out there rubbing your heads right now where the polo mallet hit you but it’s NaBloPoMo! It’s Take Back Adoptember! Cut me some slack.)
I have only officially written a fiction piece about adoption once. I was sitting at my second home. I had just bought some new sheets for the bedroom and as I frequently do I bought an extra sheet to have some matching material – in this case to make a bed skirt. As I was dismantling the sheet I came across the tag. Any of you who are familiar with HomeSense know the tag said “Made in China”.
Sitting there ripping the sheet apart, I started to think about the woman who worked in the factory in China where the sheets were made. And I thought about China’s one child policy and how the person who made the sheets and I just might have something, one really big thing, in common. We had both lost children to adoption.
And so I wrote ta story called “Made in China – The World is Red. I don’t think it was preachy. At least I hope it wasn’t preachy. It just kind of flowed out of me. I’ve learned to trust that. I entered it in a contest and it won second prize. When I went to collect the prize (money) one of the judges told me he expected to meet a Chinese lady. I was flattered.
But back to the play. It was preachy. It was written in such a way that no one was supposed to leave the theatre thinking that child would be better off with child/woman than infertile woman.
Some people believe the test for adoption should be “the best interests of the child”. Not everyone agrees. Here is what one judge said:
If … the best interests of the child is to be the determining factor in child custody cases … persons seeking babies to adopt might profitably frequent grocery stores and snatch babies from carts when the parent is looking the other way. Then, if custody proceedings can be delayed long enough, they can assert that they have a nicer home, a superior education, a better job or whatever, and that the best interests of the child are with the baby snatchers. Children of parents living in public housing or other conditions deemed less affluent and children of single parents might be considered particularly fair game.”
Justice James Heiple, Illinois Supreme Court, The “Baby Richard” case.
It’s interesting when people start dressing things up in a mantle of rights. Sometimes, they start to believe their own publicity. Sometimes they start to think of the world in terms of how hard done by they are because their “right” is being hampered. Sometimes a want gets so big that it wants to turn itself into a right.
Because the play was always on right after mine, I spent a lot of time in the green room talking to the two actors involved. I liked them. I thought, within the limits of the material, they did a good job.
I’ll never forget them. Those two actors performing that play were, in a very big way, responsible for one aspect of my waking up about adoption and the forces that were and are at work.
Peace
UM
** For new readers, I am working through the letters in these words as my writing prompts during NaBloPoMo 2011.
I’ve been there and I know how frightening it can be. You feel trapped,terrified and totally alone. So please read on.
Here are a couple of things you should know.
Statistically, 60% of women who relinquish a child for adoption never have any more children. You need to remember that. You may not have other children.
The first question every adopted person asks when they meet their parents is “Why was I given away?”
If your decision is to continue with your pregnancy, think about it, please. For your sake and your child’s.
Look seriously at your options and your prospects for the long term not just the short term. Think about where you can find support, emotional and financial. Don’t let adoption be a long term solution to a short term problem.
Adoption is no guarantee of a wonderful life. Don’t let anyone convince you that you represent the deprived end of the spectrum and prospective parents represent the perfect full and happy life end.
There are no perfect people. No one can make any such guarantee. Adoptive parents can get divorced, die, fool around on their spouses and maybe even sometimes not be warm and loving to the kids just like everybody else. They can abuse their kids. They may have money and you don’t but money does not guarantee love. Even the United Nations has said that it is a child’s right to be raised by it’s own parents.
Don’t listen to people who want to get their hands on your baby or people who just want the whole problem of your pregnancy to go away. They are thinking of themselves not you and your baby. Giving a baby up for adoption is short term gain for long term pain. Do not go to a lawyer that works with an adoption agency to find out what your rights are. Do not be coerced by pre-birth “bonding” with prospective parents. That baby is yours not theirs.
Listen to what we mothers have to say. You have the benefit of our voices. We didn’t have that. I know you are probably young and frightened but please – just think.
No matter what anybody tells you, no matter how smart-assed and cool the character “Juno” was and no matter how much everyone thought that movie was great, it was, in all aspects, not realistic about the emotions of relinquishing a child for adoption. You will not just give birth and go back happily to play the guitar with the guy you liked or were in love with. And if you do, you will do it by shutting down the part of yourself where you feel and it will take years to get it back, if in fact you do get it back.
Will they make Juno II in eighteen years when Juno meets that child and he, who no doubt will be just as smart ass as his mother, will say “Why did you give me up?”
“So I could play the guitar with my boyfriend.” It won’t sound like a very darn good reason to Juno or to him. “And oh yeah, my guitar playing boyfriend. He’s your father.”
Juno is to adoption as Pretty Woman is to prostitution.
I am a happy person, I don’t want to be angry or bitter or anything else. I am married. I have a family and a dog. I have two university degrees. I don’t feel guilty but I do feel that giving my child up for adoption was a BIG mistake for both of us.
Think twice and then think about thirty more times.
Peace
UM
** For new readers, I am working through the letters in these words as my writing prompts during NaBloPoMo 2011.
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