One blogging adoptive mom and military wife got it! Autumn read a very moving piece by Flauxclaud entitled "What National Adoption Awareness Month Means to Me: Why this Birthmother will NOT be Celebrating This November" and she got it...well, she decided not to "celebrate" adoption awareness month, but to "honor" it instead.
I replied to Autumn's post in a comment saying that it was good tht she heard the pain of adoption and was moved, and I tried to move her yet further...
I replied:
Every joy one person feels on the receiving end of an adoption represents a TRAGIC LOSS for another mother; another family that failed to remain together. The repercussions ripples out and effect many extended family and subsequent relationships and children of that mother. And the grief is LIFELONG, irresolvable, often causes PTSD, and often goes on in silencae and shame, unlike other losses that have recognized ritual.
For adopted person, regardless of how much love and good care they may receive and upward mobility and material advantages as a result of being adopted...they still feel a terrible sense of loss, rejection and abandonment.
I go further than asking these losses to be honored. I ask that we each think and choose very carefully before choosing to be part of the problem or pat of the solution.
Infertility is a grievous loss. So too is the loss of a limb or the loss of one's eyesight. But laws prevent us from taking organs from the living because it creates exploitation of the poor. Yet adoption allows, promotes and encourages such exploitation and coercion.
Adoption is a last resort for most who adopt. Loosing a child to adoption is also the last thing any mother wants to bear. And spending one's life wondering who they look like and why they were given away is not exactly anyone's choice either.
So, let's stop celebrating and let's also stop encouraging more family separations through tax benefits and the like. I fully support doing everything possible to find homes for children who are truly orphaned or who have no family able to provide safe care for them even when offered necessary resources to do so.
But I find it reprehensible to celebrate, honor, support or encourage adoption as it is currently practiced meet a high paid demand, while 129,000 children who COULD be adopted from foster care and those in orphanages around the word over age 5 go ignored.
That is something for us to cry in shame over - not honor or celebrate.
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Claud handles this month by trying to pull the covers over her head and ignore it. I, on the other hand, as ya'll know am far too much of an activist to IGNORE! I say we come out fighting back, as I suggested with a list of suggestions on Nov. 2.
Congrats to Carole Whitehead who wrote a letter to the editor that was published!
Every time we speak out - even if our voice or hand shake - we educate someone, and further empower ourselves away from the shame and guilt that was foisted upon us. Each person we help to understand the truth; each time we expose the myths and replace them with the uncomfortable truth -- hold the possibility of saving another mother suffering a similar loss! How can we allow such power to go untapped, when we know the destructive power of being silenced? We need to say NO MORE UNNECESSARY LOSSES!. FAMILY PRESERVATION not ADOPTION SEPARATION.
As I commneted on Cludia's blog, I honor her right to cope as she needs to. I, however, cannot just sick back with covers over my head and allow atrocities to continue as long as I have breath, a pen or access to a computer. Knowing that babies are kidnapped in Guatemala for adoption, stolen in China and India and trafficked to the US....I much prefer to take a more pro-active stance against the coercion and exploitation of adoption.
We each must chose to be part of the problem or part of the solution.
Congrats to Carole Whitehead who wrote a letter to the editor that was published!
Every time we speak out - even if our voice or hand shake - we educate someone, and further empower ourselves away from the shame and guilt that was foisted upon us. Each person we help to understand the truth; each time we expose the myths and replace them with the uncomfortable truth -- hold the possibility of saving another mother suffering a similar loss! How can we allow such power to go untapped, when we know the destructive power of being silenced? We need to say NO MORE UNNECESSARY LOSSES!. FAMILY PRESERVATION not ADOPTION SEPARATION.
As I commneted on Cludia's blog, I honor her right to cope as she needs to. I, however, cannot just sick back with covers over my head and allow atrocities to continue as long as I have breath, a pen or access to a computer. Knowing that babies are kidnapped in Guatemala for adoption, stolen in China and India and trafficked to the US....I much prefer to take a more pro-active stance against the coercion and exploitation of adoption.
We each must chose to be part of the problem or part of the solution.
1 comment:
Yes, I, too, would , much rather continue with activism and educating the public than coveringmy head and ignoring this month.
It amazes me that people still think adoption is such a wonderful "thing" to do. How nice, you had a good, adoptive home, didn't you? No, actually, I think it is a crime to lie to your adoptee.
And to promote adoption is to promote institutionalized lying in the form falsified birth certificates. No one,but no one, thinks about THAT issue in the month of "Adoption Awareness". Now, I'm more vocal about letting non-adotpees know the truth about my legal identity being based upon a falsified government certififed as true birth certificate. I get mixed responses, more responses lately of disgust that this fraud continues.
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