D is for Demonstrate

NaBloPoMo Blog#432 Day 3

aDoption, reunion, reform, reality

The Nablopomo Prompt for today is: If you knew that whatever you ate next would be your last meal, what would you want it to be? 

I can’t work that in here but I did do a post once along the same lines. It was entitled Last Suppers.

Here’s the link: http://wp.me/pgdfz-c1

TODAY: D is for Demonstrate       http://www.nablopomo.com

Describe someone as a demonstrator and people picture a group, marching, signs. Do you have to march and carry a sign to be a demonstrator? No you don’t.

One thing I have learned about, dare I say it, consciousness raising and adoption is that for many of us it can be a very gradual process.  For some what seems like a very small and private act may be their first demonstration.

Walking into a support group and admitting for the first time in public that our lives have been hurt by adoption is a demonstration.

Believing you have the right to know your family of origin or your son or your daughter and acting on it is a demonstration.

Setting out to educate the public about the impact of adoption for mothers and children is a demonstration.

Writing a letter to an elected representative is a demonstration.

For many of us mothers and adoptees it takes us a bit of time to figure out what our position is.   Just what it is we want to demonstrate about?  What the problem is and what we want to do about it.

I learned a new word this week. Someone in my writing group used the word hegemony in a story that we are critiquing.

Although I have heard the word before I confess I wasn’t completely sure what it meant. So I looked it up. Hegemony is the dominance or leadership of one social group or (nation) over others;

For a very long time the public perception of adoption has been controlled by those who benefit from it the most: adoption agencies and adoptive parents.  You might say that the dominance of this group has caused the rest of us some pain.

We don’t want this to continue. We don’t want it to happen to any one else.

So, one way or another, we demonstrate.

Peace

3 down: 27 to go.

UM

A is for (Adoption) Advocacy

NaBloPoMo Blog#432 Day 2

I decided that if what I was going to do was blog every day for a month, I needed a plan.  A simple plan but a plan nonetheless.  Since I am doing this because of Adoption Awareness Month (aka Adoptember) I quickly wrote out adoption and three other adoption-related words.

Adoption, Reunion, Reform, Reality

28 letters. 28 writing prompts.

Day One for introduction.  Day 30 for summation.  Et voila!

http://www.nablopomo.com

Today: A is for Advocacy.

Nablopomo is also putting up prompts. Today’s is: What part of writing do you like best?

The thing I like best about writing is that you can make anything happen.  And if I could make anything happen in adoption advocacy would be it.

There are so many instances in life where you are not permitted to  do the thing you want to do unless you have had independent legal advice. So many instances where society wants to make sure you are giving an informed consent.

In the province where I live a child  who is the subject of a custody battle will have his or her own lawyer appointed and paid for by the state.

But let that same child get pregnant when she is seventeen she is more or less on her own or even worse being given advice by someone who has a direct or indirect interest in getting their hands on her baby.

Those around her just want the fastest way to make the whole problem of the unexpected pregnancy go away. Often her parents want that and so may the baby’s father.

If that same seventeen year old were considering abortion in some states in the US she would be compelled to view in graphic details all aspects of the action she is considering.

Yet no one sets out the impact of adoption.

No one says your child may grow up to be a wealthy man, the respected CEO of one of the world’s most progressive and innovative organizations and yet he will never stop feeling the pain of wondering why he was given away.

To be young, single and pregnant is a very lonely and frightening experience.  There is no one in your corner who is acting without a very healthy dose of self interest.

And so I say if I could make anything happen, the way I can with writing, it would be that every pregnant person who is even considering adoption be assigned an advocate. One who will stand up for her and her baby.

Some one who will provide her with information about the true impact of adoption on mother and child.

It should be a basic right.  Objective advice and representation.

It is of the same importance to we mothers of the adopted as obtaining access to original birth certificates is to adoptees.

And speaking of OBC’s …

Tomorrow D is for demonstrate.

Peace

2 down 28 to go.

UM

Lost Boys

I was out for a walk this morning and decided to go through the city’s wealthiest neighbourhood. I saw a very sad sight. There were two police cars there and a third was arriving on the scene. A well dressed woman was standing at the end of the driveway but there didn’t appear to have been a traffic accident or anything. And then I noticed something else. The police had a young boy – maybe 16 or 17 – handcuffed with his hands behind his back.

I will never forget the look on that kid’s face. It wasn’t fear, it was pain. His face looked like tragedy of the comedy/tragedy masks. He was trying very hard not to cry.

I wanted to go over but with now six policemen there I didn’t think there was any point.

The kid looked so incredulous and in so much pain that I wondered if the woman was his mother and she was throwing him out of the house. He was also well dressed and there was that look of disbelief. I moved along because I didn’t want to appear to be a voyeur but I thought about it a lot as I walked back home. My son’s adoptive parents threw him out of the house when he was about that age. In fact, he was still in that state when I found him. That’s probably why this scene had such an impact on me.

It also made me think of something else that happened this week. I was at an award ceremony and one of the writers who was receiving an award made it clear in his acceptance speech that he was a success in spite of, not because of, his father. Now this guy was getting an award for his body of work so he was no kid. Perhaps in his early or mid-fifties. And yet he still felt compelled to give the finger to the old man in a mighty public way. The wounds of childhood and adolescence run deep.

How important it is to tell our children that we believe in them.

I’ll be thinking about him for a while – that boy in the handcuffs at the end of a laneway in one of Canada’s wealthiest neighbourhoods.

I hope he is OK.

Peace

UM