What has your summer been like?

It’s been a weird summer here on the West Coast after a very wet and chilly spring, summer started out just okay, and now, with a blink of the eye, it’s almost fall and we are finally getting hot weather.

 

What is the objective of open adoption?

I’ve been trying to wrap my head around what I read about ‘open adoption’ in online adoption groups that focus on domestic infant adoption.

• Some include a set number of phone calls or face time per year, with or without actual contact.
• Some have one visit a year for a set number of hours in a local park, or other local setting.
• Some have no contact at all, not even what would be considered semi-open, but they do know the Mother’s name.
• Some only send updates to the Mother once, maybe twice a year, it’s also often a one-way street.
• Some have wide open adoptions where there are no set number of visits, nor number of updates, they just become part of a bigger family.

 

Had enough of this, we aren’t in high school anymore…

From 2015 – lightly edited and additional note at the end.

Imagine what it would be like if those challenged by infertility, or pregnancy losses were split into two groups. One group grappled with the very deep feelings of pain, inadequacy, losses that were directly caused from not being able to have children. The other group would include people like me who when I was ready and wanted to have another child, couldn’t have one because I waited too long, I adjusted quickly and continued on. That doesn’t give me the right to dismiss how others feel who can’t have children, I’m not them, they aren’t me. It doesn’t give me the right to blame how they feel on their genetics, how they were raised, how positive or negative they are naturally. I don’t get to mock them to make myself feel like I’m better, or stronger, or more well-rounded.

 

Revisiting the post Revolving cradles

Seeing as Safe Haven has become a point of interest to many, thought it time to repost this post (below) on Revolving Cradles. Skim parts of this post if you must, but pay attention to what they figured out worked better than Revolving Cradles (now called Save Haven Boxes) across Europe in the mid 1800’s.

Revolving cradles…

 

Adoption Agencies Must Do Better Than This

I’m struggling writing this in anything close to a cohesive post so you have my apologies in advance and if I get anything wrong, I’ll fix it and apologize again. According to the article linked below, my reading is that adoption may be the best thing ever for a child because adoption agencies and a adoption law firm say as much when you only look at the quotes the author pulled from one of their articles on their website. And only one of the linked articles speaks to any of the challenges adoptees have to process, adjust to, and hopefully move through (or not), and that post I read in full came from a website called aptparenting.com. I read it because I’d never heard of them.

The rest of the quotes in the article linked below came from posts from Adoption Agencies and a Law Firm that also does adoptions. I have chosen to link to the posts the quotes come from, but not use the words quoted in the article.

And as you read the article linked below, notice that not a single Adoptee Voice was to be heard in an article about Adoptees.