I is for If you are pregnant…

NaBloPoMo Blog#432 Day 14

adoption, reunIon, reform, reality**

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.

U is for U, U, U! Why Is It Always About U?

NaBloPoMo Blog#432 Day 12

adoption, reUnion, reform, reality**

Here are nine of my favourite Unsigned Masterpiece posts on various aspects of adoption.

They range from the political, Who’s Your Daddy? or That’s One Big Powerful Mother, Dude! to the extremely personal such as Last Suppers or The Day I Met My Son (It still makes me smile.) or the somewhat tongue-in-cheek, Betty Friedan Made Me Give Up My Baby.

Enjoy!

Peace

UM

** For new readers, I am working through the letters in these words as my writing prompts during NaBloPoMo 2011.

BETTY FRIEDAN MADE ME GIVE UP MY BABY    http://wp.me/pgdfz-if

I saw Kate Winslet on TV the other day talking about the film she made with Leonardo DiCaprio, Revolutionary Road.  She said that in preparing for her role she read a lot of early feminist writing including The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan. (Dec. 13, 2009)

LAST SUPPERS      http://wp.me/pgdfz-c1

There is a meal that I have always thought of as my last supper. It was served to me, ironically, by my boyfriend’s mother who ran a diner and did not know I was pregnant by her son at the time.  (Sept. 29, 2008)

THE DAY I MET MY SON …   http://wp.me/pgdfz-nF

He took the bus to Toronto and one cold raining April morning I drove down to the bus station to meet him.   He got off the bus and said “I only have to look at those eyes and I know you’re my mother.  (April 10, 2010)

ANGRY BIRDS (and Adoption)    http://wp.me/pgdfz-yh

Sometimes you hit the sweet spot and with that one hit everything collapses like an adoption reunion on a bad day. (Sept. 21, 2011)

WHO’S YOUR DADDY?      http://wp.me/pgdfz-5N

Matthew Hays is a gay man who had been de-selected as a prospective father for a lesbian couple’s child in favour of a sperm bank. He writes quite poignantly about his loss of something he had never had nor contemplated until it was proposed to him by the couple. (August 10, 2008)

THAT’S ONE BIG POWERFUL MOTHER DUDE!    http://wp.me/pgdfz-4n

I want to know who she is and where she is, that big powerful mother who keeps convincing the legislators of this continent that we first mothers want to hide from our children …  (Aug. 3, 2008)

ROOM (The Bestselling Book) AND ADOPTION   http://wp.me/pgdfz-vO

I keep thinking ROOM rhymes with WOMB. I don’t know. Is this whole book an allegory? Am I reading in too much? I hate when people do that with books. But maybe, just maybe, I am right.  (Aug. 21, 2011)

LOOK DEEPLY INTO THE PALM OF YOUR HAND   http://wp.me/pgdfz-r1

If you look deeply into the palm of your hand, you will see your parents and all generations of your ancestors. All of them are alive in this moment. Each is present in your body. You are the continuation of each of these people. Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese monk, activist and writer (May 28, 2010)

NIETZSCHE GETS IT…       http://wp.me/pgdfz-vJ

[A]ccording to Joanna Ravenna in The New Yorker, Nietzsche said that the best way to enrage people is to force them to change their mind about you.  (July 29, 2011)

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

Adoption and NaBloPoMo – Day One

Blogger#432 NaBloPoMo

There have been a few times in my life when I have asked myself “How do I get myself into these things?” and this dear readers is one of those times.

This is post #1 for NaBloPoMo.  For those who don’t know or who are not familiar that means I have committed to try and post every day for a month. There’s a NaBloPoMo badge you can put up but I can’t get it to work yet.

The folks at NaBloPoMo help out by setting out daily writing prompts. I looked at the one for last Friday. It was “Have you ever been between a rock and a hard place?”

Oh NaBloPoMo! You are making me laugh.

Are you kidding? Have you read my blog?   Have I ever been between a rock and a hard place?

Oh yes – I have.  In fact, if I hadn’t been between a rock etc. I probably wouldn’t be blogging at all.

I lay the blame for my participation  in NaBloPoMo  squarely at the feet of Amanda over at http://www.declassifiedadoptee.com/ .  She writes a very excellent blog that you should read if you have not yet had the pleasure.

Declassified Amanda is taking part in NaBloPoMo for November because November is Adoption Awareness Month or as she calls it “Adoptember”.  I thought it was an excellent idea. November started as National Adoption Month but some how got turned into Adoption Awareness Month which to some people means In Praise of Adoption Month. But that is not the case here and on many other blogs.

We want to raise awareness of the reality that so many of us who have had an adoption experience live with every day. That includes the impact of adoption on mothers and children, the stereotypes of adoption, the myths of adoption, the fight for open records, etc.

So NaBloPoMo I hope you don’t mind me writing about Friday’s prompt four days late.  I have been been “between a rock and a hard place” and I will be writing about it all adoption awareness month long.

Dear readers wish me luck. I have a writing plan. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.

Peace

UM

Who’s Your Daddy II

There are two parts to this post. The first is this item from the Family Preservation Blog. The second is a reaction to this news story that I read on a local newspaper’s website.

First, Part One from the Family Preservation Blog on Sunday, December 20, 2009

Ontario Disallowed Father’s Names

An issue of great concern for my colleagues at the Canadian Council of Natural Mothers (CCNM) is that when mothers relinquished, and gave the father’s name, wrote it in on the forms for the birth certificate – it was deleted, whited out, expunged.

Now that the records have been opened, adoptees are finding their mothers but not [their] fathers.

Karen Lynn of CCNM says they went to great extent with photo copying secions of the forms that were whited out so that the dotted line she KNOWS she wrot eon appears to be in tact!

Apparently, the law, up until 1986, forbade listing the father’s name on birth registries or adoption papers for children of unmarried mothers unless both mother and father demanded it. So only some 10% of those documents identify a father.

Part Two:

I originally read the report of this story on the on-line version of the local newspaper. Because it is on-line there is the opportunity to comment. The first comment tells adoptees not to worry about finding their fathers because children who are given up for adoption are rarely the products of long and loving relationships. (This person needs to watch the first episode of Find My Family or check out my post, The 40 year Secret.)

Excuse me?

All you mothers out there – How long had you been going out with your child’s father?

For me – it was 4 years when I got pregnant.

These old myths about us die a hard death?

And what makes me saddest of all is some people don’t even know how much they have been brainwashed into believing what people would like them to believe.

Peace

UM