So UM, what the hell have you been doing?

Wherein our interviewer asks UM a few questions…

Q:       So Um, tell us. What the hell have you been doing?

UM:   Clearly, not writing on this blog for one thing.

Q:       Why is that?

UM:   Good question. If you read my last posts, my Dad died . Actually, in the last year or so, my Dad, my uncle and two friends.

Q. Sorry to hear that. Is that the only reason?

UM. Well uh, I just felt tired. I just felt tired of the whole adoption thing. It seems to me sometimes that a competition is developing about who has been hurt the most by adoption. That makes me sad. You sometimes feel that there are so many forces at work your voice is like dropping a grain of sand in the ocean to try and stem the tide of misinformation. I think one of the saddest things about this is the fact that even though you may be part of the adoption triangle it is hard, maybe impossible, to walk in the other guy’s shoes. It makes me angry sometimes when adoptees start projecting stuff onto birth mothers.

I think maybe the deaths had something to do with it too. Too many people are burning daylight when they could have another person, who just happens to share their DNA and loves them, in their lives. Yet the thing that tore them apart in the first place continues to work its evil magic and keep them apart.

Q:        Don’t I remember you writing a post about getting tired?

UM:    Yes I did, the one about the geese flying in formation. About how the lead goose falls back to let someone else take the lead for a while. Maybe that’s what I’ve done. Not that I ever felt I was the lead. I am in awe sometimes of how often and how well other people write about adoption, birth moms and adoptees. How they keep fighting the fight. I am also in awe of the adoptive parents who get it and write about it. How wonderful it would be to be dealing with adoptive parents like them. There are some wonderful ones out here in the blogosphere.

Q:        Did you happen to catch “Find My Family” the other night?

UM:    Yes I did. I approached it with some trepidation but I was, for the most part, pleased with what I saw. I liked the name of the show for one thing. That’s pretty gutsy. I am sure the letters are pouring in to ABC saying how dare they call a birth family – family. In fact, I went on the ABC website just to see what people were saying. Most of the comments were pro from what I could see but there were a few – my child has a family or how dare you put this on TV and give my child ideas. Hmmmm. I saw the woman from the show on GMA this morning and I thought there was some reassuring back peddling going on. All that says to me is that even if the show isn’t perfect, those of us in favour of open records and raising awareness generally, not necessarily in that order, should write in and support it. I liked seeing a birth mother and father who accurately expressed what it feels like to have lost a child to adoption even though they went on to marry and have other kids. I liked what it showed about the adoptee and that the adoptive parents were welcoming. I thought meeting under the family tree was a little hokey but on the other hand they are re-enforcing the idea that this is your family. Not perfect but if ABC can withstand the pro-adoption backlash they are sure to get I think it will be a good thing. If it makes one adoptee not feel guilty for wanting to know – that is a great victory. If it makes one birth mother or birth father more convinced they have a right to know what happened to their child – that is wonderful. If it makes some adoptive parents accept that their child has two families – I’m all for that. Sure adoption reunions are complicated and don’t just involve running toward each other through a field of daisies – or up a tree to a hill. Sure they didn’t mention the fight for open records. And maybe doing all this in public isn’t ideal but I’d do it if I was hitting a brick wall and it was the only way to find my kid. It’s only the first show. I’m prepared to cut them a fair bit of slack.

Q:      Seems like you haven’t lost all your passion for the subject matter.

UM:   No I guess not. It’s hard to open the door just a little. Maybe that’s another reason.

Q:      Why don’t we wrap it up for now.

UM:   Can I just say one last thing?

Q:       Of Course.

UM:  Whenever I see a birth parent and a child hug each other for the first time I have the same reaction I do when I see a baby being born. Tears because it is so beautiful and wonderful. I will never ever forget the first time, my son, his father and I hugged each other.

Q:      Can we call to talk to you again?

UM : Absolutely. I appreciate you getting in touch with me.

UM’s Most Popular Post So Far

I thought it be interesting to see, since I hadn’t written for a while, which of my archived posts was getting the most on-going traffic since Unsigned Masterpiece began in July of 2008.

It is “Sorry for Any Inconvenience” posted October 20, 2008. Here it is:

Sorry for Any Inconveninece….

In my opinion, “Sorry for any inconvenience.” has to be one of the most insincere phrases in the English language, tossed off usually in a manner that leads you to believe the person, corporation, telephone company, cable provider or government service is anything but sorry.

In that vein here is an announcement from the government of my home province. For some reason, it makes me think about the CAS – that’s Children’s Aid Society – and asking them how they feel about issuing a few apologies.

Attorney General Chris Bentley says a proposed apology act for the province would help make the justice system more affordable and punctual.

The provincial government last week rolled out proposed legislation that would remove the risk of civil court liability for individuals and organizations that issue apologies.

The government said the new law would help victims’ recovery, improve accountability and transparency in the health-care sector, and aid the justice system by “fostering the resolution of civil disputes and shortening or avoiding litigation.”

Bentley said, “The goal of the legislation is to encourage sincere apologies — saying sorry for a mistake or wrongdoing is the right thing to do.”

So maybe I should call the CAS. Let’s see what would I ask them to apologize for. Maybe the fact that they knew at the time I had my son that there were no Catholic homes looking to adopt a child. Maybe for not telling me that they had a policy that said he could not be adopted by a family of another faith. And for not telling me that my son, therefore, would go straight to foster care. And that he sat for almost 10 months until finally a family showed up. Not the perfect family, just the first one.

Yes that might be a good place to start. They should apologize don’t you think.

After all, it’s not going to cost them anything.

Peace

UM

Happy Thanksgiving USA

If you look closely at this photograph you will see a thin gray line about half way up. That line is the far shore – the United States of America – upstate New York or more accurately northern New York state.

I hope everyone who lives south of me is having a great day and spending it with family – in all family’s variations – in a way that feels good.

I hope the dinner is wonderful.  I have been hungry for a week watching everyone cook for Thanksgiving on TV.

It feels to me, though we are in the midst of economic woes, that there is new optimism.   Maybe some things needed to be changed.

I hope all of you feel that way too.

A toast to a definition of family that includes everybody.  May that be a change we see someday soon too.

Peace

UM

P.S. You haven’t heard from me for a while because I wrote a play and I just submitted it to a playwriting competition.   Revisions, revisions, revisions.

From the moment of birth….a moment of truth

I was commenting on another blog the other day that I almost thought it funny that I was once an UNWED MOTHER!!!! The Victorian morality of it all. It’s so weird and, of course, so sad because that Victorian morality was responsible for a lot of harm in the world.

As an aside – Pejorative term that it was, it at least contained the word mother. As a second aside, it just occurred to me that If that UNWED MOTHER was writing this blog she would sign it with the same initials I do – UM.

How much I feel that unwed mother person was someone else. I don’t know where she came from. I guess she was what was left of me when I was beaten down, betrayed, abandoned and terrified.

I was one of the people who was never even allowed to see her baby. Why the heck I didn’t get up out of the bed, say “Fuck You!” to anybody who tried to stop me and go to see MY baby I don’t know. I know that’s what I would do today. To the point of being arrested if they tried to stop me.

It is only recently that I have found out what the theory behind the forbidding of any mother/child time together. I was told this was because it would help me, allow me to heal. You know, get on with my life. It was what was best.

This is from “Authoritative Knowledge and Single Women’s Unintentional Pregancies, Abortions, Adoption and Single Motherhood: Social Stigma and Structural Violence,” by Marcia A. Ellison, in “Medical Anthropology Quarterly“, 17(3), 2003, p.326.

“The Post-World War II Adoption Mandate — “From 1960-70, 27 percent of all births to married women between the ages of 15 and 29 were conceived premaritally. Yet the etiology of single, white, middle-class women’s conceptions had shifted again and were now perceived as symptoms of female neurosis (Solinger, 1982; Vincent, 1961). In keeping with this medical model, a single pregnant woman could obtain a therapeutic abortion if she could find a physician willing to diagnose her as psychologically unsound, or if her pregnancy could be diagnosed as life-threatening. However, the approval of a board of hospital physicians was necessary to obtain a therapeutic abortion and 53 percent of teaching hospitals and 40 percent of all U.S. Hospitals, and thus their boards, required that women accept simultaneous sterilization to prevent a future unplanned pregnancy (Solinger, 1998:24). … Given those constraints, the majority (85-95 percent) of single, white, middle-class women, who either could not or would not procure an illegal or therapeutic abortion, were encouraged, and at times coerced, to adopt-away their child (Edwards, 1993; McAdoo, 1992; Pannor et al, 1979; Solinger, 1992, 1993).

Maternity homes became institutions where neurotic pregnancies could be cured by separating single mothers from their children (Solinger, 1992). By the 1950s, attachment theory dictated that this separation occur as soon as possible after birth, to promote an infant’s ability to bond with its married adoptive parents (Berebitsky, 2000).”

You don’t have to have been in a home for unwed mothers to have had this experience.

Why does it always seem to come down to what works best for adoption?

Attachment disorder – indeed.

Peace

UM

Oh what a nasty piece of work art thou…

Two and a half pages of accusations from the boy who isn’t angry.

Now he is attacking my daughter.

Really, shame on him. The attacks, as usual, based on evidence that exists only in his head.

If there is anyone who is truly innocent in this whole adoption thing, it’s her. She was born after I found him and always thought of herself as a person with a big brother, That is until he pulled his first disappearing act.

Shortly after that happened and I cajoled him back into our lives, he wanted my daughter to fly out to his end of the country and visit him on her own. She was 8 years old and his disappearing act made her a bit nervous. She didn’t want to go. That was raised in the two and a half page diatribe. The daughter is now 20 years old. In other words that happened twelve years ago. I didn’t know her not going was that big an issue. It hasn’t been raised before.

His adoptive parents, he said, used to put him on a plane to Europe by himself regularly when he was that age.

I resisted the urge to write back and say oh was that the time that x happened or y happened. All the things that he has told me he suffered at the hands of his immediate and extended adoptive family.

In fact, I don’t think I’m going to be doing any writing or writing back any more. He did tell me in this latest email that he was blocking my email address but whatever – he is into dramatic power plays – that’s easy to get around if I want to but I don’t want to. I think this is it. His father – god love him – just may have been right. He has refused to have anything to do with him anymore and he says he feels better for it. He was tired of being attacked and on trial all the time.

The daughter too is feeling that enough is enough. She says he needs to explore the difference between suspicion and knowledge. I thought it was a very good and accurate turn of phrase.

Trust is an important thing in a relationship and he has done a very good job at destroying the trust in this one in the last almost three years. My doctor – the marathon runner – says adoptees have real issues with trust. I think she is right, as always, about that too.

Right now, his happy face mug is sitting in a sturdy card board box with some packing material around it. When I pulled it off the shelf, I found a rock inside. It is a rock that I picked up the day we went for a ride in the country when I went out to visit him. The wonderful day we had on the 18th anniversary of the day we met. It was supposed to be the crossover year. The start of knowing each other for more time than we had not.

I used to think there was hope as long as that mug was sitting on my bookcase. Now I think having hope is foolish and just prolonging the agony. He has gone over or been pushed into the dark side. I am not exaggerating when I say, I think he feels nothing but hate in his heart for me.

I don’t know how to find my way out of this. I started getting stomach pains after this latest attack.  I got them after the last series of attacks before this too.  That time I went on medication for my stomach. Not this time.

We are all sad about it. But I really don’t think there is anything we can do. I don’t think he is coming back.

I think he needs help and I don’t say that merely because he doesn’t want to have a relationship with me. I have seen this same scenario play out with his girlfriend, his male friends, his former business partner, his father, his father’s kids. I was just naive and stupid enough to think it wouldn’t happen with me. Or my daughter. It can’t be a very happy way to go through life.

How am I coping? I’m OK. I think I just have to learn to accept that it is over.

I repeat my mantra every now and then when I need to. It’s goes like this.

UM – You are not a “nasty piece of work who sees herself as a victim” and you know it.

And I do know it.

I hope he finds peace – those were his father’s words to me too. We really hope he does.

Sadly

UM