I couldn’t find any words over the last week to talk about Mother’s Day that could form a cohesive post, I tried, I failed. Instead, I read old posts and it’s surprising how many reference mom and/or dad. Then I found a post written in 2011 about what it means to be a family, I also read the comments including the following comment: Read the rest of this entry »
First Mother Forum posted about the latest adoption letter to the Ethicist at the New York Times here. I read both the letter from the adoptive mom and the response to her letter by the Ethicist, but what I really want to talk about is this… Read the rest of this entry »
I read an article on the results of a study on friends and what I call ‘fit’ and want to talk about how it relates to being adopted and how we experienced being adopted. I am not saying fit is all there is, it isn’t, I’m saying I think it is a big component in adoption for the adoptee. I have two life-long friends where there is no work required to maintain the relationship, whether a day or several years pass without talking, we just fit effortlessly and it’s always like we talked yesterday. I had that same fit with dad, less so with mom. Read the rest of this entry »
Reading a post on naming your child (adoption) and one commenter shared she has two close adopted relatives who weren’t named at birth. A second commenter brought up that the mother of their child named her child, but somehow, the original birth certificate only said Baby Girl Surname. The response by the first commenter was that maybe mistakes happened, but neither of her adopted relatives wanted to know anything about their birth families.
The above conversation collided with the article I read after…
You may have been told to put yourself out there, pass along your adoption profile, get friends and family to pass on the message that you want to adopt. This has been a standard for a long time
You may have also been told to reach out to expectant mothers, especially those who have joined an adoption group on FB or an adoption forum seeing support. Read the rest of this entry »
The first time I heard about microagressions in adoption was from ABM on Adoptive Black Mom, this post specifically. Yesterday, I was skimming through an annual report by Rudd that talked about a study on microaggressions and adoptees. Read the rest of this entry »
I want to talk about the reaction in the adoption community when the news broke about the Hart family and the reaction by some vocal adoptive parents in the community. I don’t want to talk about what happened because it serves no purpose. I want to speak carefully, but I have my own lived experience that applies a filter and bias to my words. Read the rest of this entry »
For the last three days I keep going back to a post on AFC but couldn’t find the words, so I’m bringing it here to talk about. It’s a post by a Former Foster Youth (FFY) that is in no way problematic and, was meant to help foster parents and foster adoptive parents understand what may be in the child’s mind. Read the rest of this entry »
The question I keep asking myself is how to get some adoptive parents to step outside of their bubble of ‘how beautiful adoption is’ long enough to see the full picture of what adoption can be like for the one adopted over the course of their life. From the parent who said that their 2.5 year old won’t have a “primal wound” because they are just so filled with joy, to the parent of a tween who hears only what they want to hear from their child, never stopping to ask themselves if they pre-conditioned their child to only tell them what they want to hear, or that what they say can be part of how they feel, not all of what they feel. Read the rest of this entry »
I often use this blog as a way to vent, join my disjointed thoughts into something cohesive. Most of these will sit in my drafts and never be published. Yesterday I wrote one of those posts never intended to be published, today someone brought the discussion back to front of mind, and sure enough, what upset me yesterday, is still happening today, so I’m going to publish my thoughts from yesterday.
Advice to *some* adoptive parents, please stop with the me, me, what about me, regarding the title adoptive mom being used in news reports about the horrific tragedy that occurred in Florida. Read the rest of this entry »
If you know me well, the title tells you this is a post where I’m going to vent a little, blow off steam that’s been percolating for nigh onto a week. Read the rest of this entry »
Daily contradictions in a life filled with complicated realities. Painful memories have been triggered by the news that push to intrude into my mind instead of staying firmly in the past. Simple welcome memories that pop into my head that bring me joy in the middle of a mundane task in one moment, to fear of what lies ahead, to sheer awe at what someone did, sometimes even for me. Days when I’m caught unaware by a rush of nostalgia that washes over me sparked by a simple object or picture that caught my eye, quickly dampened by the collision of other memories and knowledge of that time intruding to remind me that life really wasn’t that simple, or good. Read the rest of this entry »
This Day in History
