OFF TOPIC: Tribute to a Dear Departed Friend

I was 17 or 18, waiting tables at the Cafe Wha and the Why Not on McDougal Street in the Village in 1962-3. Richie Havens was playing these basket houses. After the shows were over, we walked cross town to hang at his crib on Fourth between C and D where he played all night and his "brothers" Dino and Natgoa on the bongos.

"Success is not measured by the position one has reached in life, rather by the obstacles one overcomes while trying to succeed" Booker T. Washington

Richie started out with nothign and reached great heights.

That smoke-filled pad (think Willie Nelson's bus) overflowed with LOVE in its purest form. It radiated from Richie's enormously long hands on his guitar and shined out through his broken-toothed grin. His love for playing and singing was virally contagious!

We lost touch for decades, as friends do. I followed his career from afar in utter awe.

When we met again at a show at the State Theater in New Brunswick, NJ - in the late 80s early 90s? - it was like no time had passed at all. He greeted me with open arms noting that my teenaged son was the spitting image of me at his age!

This post is off my usual topoic of adoption but it is definately about family, because Richie was about the family of man. Back in that lower east side tenement, two little girl babies occasionally toddled about if we hung out into daylight hours.

I saw him again several times over the years after that as he generously performed at fundraisers throughout NJ.  I learned that he was a doting grandpa and living in NJ, albeit without Nan. Nan and I talked. He confirmed that it WAS him on the AmTrack commercials! I KNEW it! No one else could duplicate his voice. 

I am so very sorry that I was unable to be at his viewing in NY on Monday.  I eagerly await word of a memorial concert at Bethel Arts Center. I hope it comes to fruition. I will be there...and so will He. Ashes to ashes, on Yasgurs Farm once again.

He's jammin' with Janis and Jimi!

Rest in Peace. Thank you for leaving so much of yourself for the world. Listen to his music whenever you are doen and will lighten your day!

Brown Versus Capobiancos: Father v Strangers

As the Supreme Court decides the fate of Baby Veronica - now 3-1/2, major newspapers editorials take sides. some asking that the Indian Child Welfare Act be ignored and or done away with.

The comments posted to these editorials and those supporting the rights of Veronica's father, are  VILE and clearly indicate that public opinion on these issues have remained unchanged since the 1970 Olga Scarpetta contested adoption.

The public is firmly entrenched in the perception of adoptive parents ALWAYS being the more deserving party. They are seen as hallowed, selfless saviors who are above reproach. And they are the wounded party in a disputed adoption as they deserve to have what they paid for.

The naural parernts in disputed adoptions are reneggers, forgive me, but what e used to call "Indian givers."

Prevailing belief is that anyone who even THINKS about or considers placing a child or allowing a child to be adopted is contemptuous, despicable and unfit. Societal lepers. Public opinion says once you think about adoption, you do not get a second chance, no change of mind.

The facts of the case are irrelevant to this mob mentality that seeks only to tar and feather the "lowly" natural parents.

Underlying these strong - albeit unreasonable - opinions on the part of the public and some newspapers' editors - is that they can identify with the adopters and not a parent who in any way considers adoption, even for a split second, or under pressure, or forced or coerced, or without full knowledge of what they are signing. No matter. They are sure, they never would!

Signing - under any circumstances - puts us in a category with child abusers.

In addition, in this particular case, you have the racial issue and the Indian Child Welfare Act. Regarding these, I have read comments that outright or subtly suggest “reverse discrimination.”
White, wealthy, married = power and "right."

Sadly the best interest of the child is of little concern, and constitutional right of parents to their own child, less still.

Finally, there is little to no value placed on nature and biological connectedness. Blood relations are meaningless (unless you are researching your own ancestry and roots). Babies are commodities that are bought and manufactured with bought eggs, sperm and rented wombs that use mothers as human incubators -- all for the wealthy who "deserve" them and are entitled to them. Indicitive of this view is a comment that callled Brown a sperm donor.

We are entitled to disdain and disgust.

Pray for Veronica and her DAD!! They need and deserve one another and belong to be together forever after.

Adoption is The Wrong Word!

There is extreme backlash against anything that can be labelled "anti-adoption," even when it is merely speaking FOR the equal rights of those adopted!

After all, how can any sane sensible person say anything negative about the magical, airy-fairy, warm fuzzy, win-win process of an "unwanted,"abandoned or abused, "orphan" being "rescued" and "saved" by loving parents? Shouldn't we all just - gratefully - sing its praises?

And yet, there is another side of adoption that is far less pretty and thus hidden away and unspoken: loss, separation, grief, feelings of rejection and unworthiness.

Paul Sunderland an addiction and relationship counselor at LifeWorks community hits the nail on the head when he says: "Adoption is the wrong word." When we are talking about the difficulties adoptees have that cause them to be over-represented in all sorts of mental health facilities and particularly in addiction treatment, it is not "adoption" that is at the root of their dilemma, it is RELINQUISHMENT! Watch his lecture!

At the very heart of every child being "chosen" - rescued, saved - is a child who knows - who senses on a cellular preverbal level - he has been rejected, unwanted, unworthy of being loved by the one person in the world who is supposed to love him unconditionally: his Mother.  This creates the shame that is at the cure of all addictive and all self-destructive behavior.

There is loss, separation anxiety; there is untold, denied grief... and there is SHAME in the act of relinquishment and being relinquished.

Sunderland argues that the same is true for all parties in adoption. Adoptive parents who have struggled with infertility suppress their grief over the disappointment of not being able to create their own child, and of course mothers and fathers who loose children to adoption have gaping holes of grief that has no formal ritual or allowable expression in any public or familial way....no condolences cards, no one saying the simple "I'm sorry for your loss"; no help to properly grieve. In fact, mothers often experience societal shunning and continued, lifelong shaming. How can any mother let her child go?

The pain of relinquishment cuts very deep down to our core, our essence as a human being.

Sunderland says:

"It's not so much what happens to you in life that throws you, it's actually how secure your beginnings are. It's a bit like the storm analogy. In a storm, the trees don't blow down just because the wind is strong. The ones that blow down blow down because the roots aren't strong enough to hold them up."

What an apt metaphor!  For indeed adoption severs one at their very roots. Uprooted from heritage, lineage, all who look and sound - and smell - like you. How utterly and totally disorienting!

We need to speak about this albeit with the proper words: the relinquishment that underlies and underpins every adoption. Yet too often adoptive parents want to think of the process only from their perspective. And why not? The word adopt means "to take as one's own." Nothing in the word adoption expresses the loss necessary for the taking. Thus, as Sunderland notes, it is often the wrong word. It is not so much adoption that is being opposed by reformers, but the destruction of the family of origins that underpins it.

Many who adopt admit not consciously wanting think of the all-too-often unseen foreign mother. many in fact admit choosing International adoption to prevent any contact with a mother who represents great fear of coming between adoptive mother and child in a very real sense of changing her mind, snatching the child back, or reuniting with later.  Out of sight is out of mind, for too many whop adopt today, though the fears remain deep in the unconscious psyche and are unseen elephants the whole family lives with, as are the ghosts of the "real" children the adopters never saw come to pass and the adoptee's job is to compete with.

Like a plant cutting, sometimes the uprooted child takes root well where it is transplanted, and sometimes not so well. And often an adoption looks and feels like a banana growing on a cherry tree.

Sunderland speaks of the many who experience multiple relinquishments - multiple separations and loss - and recognizes that transnational adoptions present, by far, the most difficult adjustments.

And yet all too often we judge the "success" of such placements by resilience of the adoptee, his survival mechanism, her ability to put on a happy face in order to please and be accepted and not experience yet another relinquishment.

We have all encountered adoptees who are experts at internalizing their happy face and convincing themselves that they are "fine." They need to know nothing of that painful time of relinquishment and prefer to keep it deeply buried where it is safe from causing any harm.

The pain of relinquishment is lifelong for mothers. Yet they - the mothers who loose their children - too, often believe if they never talk about, face, or deal with their loss it will somehow hurt less. Many are so deep in denial they are unable to accept any attempt at reunification. They know that seeing their child as an adult will just open that wound they have worked so hard to conceal. Once opened that scarred-over wound will be an unstoppable floodgate of pain, grief, sorrow, guilt and shame.

Yet, out of the mouths of babes, comes the uncensored truth: "I wish I'd been in your tummy." I wish I was born to and rauised by the same person. I wish I hadn't been taken away, separated, experienced such a grievous loss.  So says a 4-year-old grappling with understanding the unexplainable. 

Adoption - nay, relinquishment - is a pain no one would intentionally wish to happen. Yet the pro-adoptionsists want more, more, more. Read Kathryn Joyce's latest article on where the babies are being taken from and which mothers in which nations exploited. And be sure to check out her latest book about the evangelical adoption movement. 

Sunderland knows the root of the issue is the relinquishment. Add to that forced relinquishments, coerced and pressured relinquishments, relinquishments obtained under false prestences, not to mention adoptions that occur with no signed consent from one or both parents, or forged.

And, make no mistake about it: there is NOTHING altruistic or Godly about paying tens of thousands of dollars to "rescue" ONE child and leaving his family behind in the same horrid conditions, with now the addition of a painful loss to grieve!  Every adoption begins with a tragedy, a loss, a separation.  Most the result of poverty.

Each person who spends tens of thousands to procure just one child from overses could have used that same money to have a well dug, or a school built, books purchased, medical supplies to save the lives of the entire village...instead of snatching one child and leaving the rest behind. Imagine multiplying that by thousands and thousands of relinquishments and adoptions! We could feed the world and prevent so much loss. Or, at the very least better care foir our half million foster kids, more that 100,000 of whom cannot be reunified with family, and could be adopted were they not being ignored by those who God is allegedly pointing overseas to adopt.

Not only is adoption not serving the highest good, but in far too many cases it is supporting criminals, baby brokers, and child traffickers.  Taking children who have been kidnapped or stolen from loving, caring mothers! In these cases, adoption is most asuredly the wrong word. Abduction is a far better fit for what is taking place.

But the word adoption is such a soothing feel-good salve of a word. It so perfectly sugar coats all the pain on which it was created.  So we cloak the pain, the shame, the loss and the horror it leaves in its wake and give all parties to adoption a bright shiny smiley mask to wear. And we expect - demand - those who were relinquished and then adopted to not only look happy but to be grateful they were not aborted or left to languish in an orphanage. And to never bite the hand that rescued and fed them by talking about, or questing for, their severed roots. Just grateful obedience.... on a foundation of and buried pain and shame.

So when we speak out against adoption, we are speaking FOR PREVENTION of family devasation, we are speaking against loss, separation and shame, especially when unncessary....and there are better ways to resolve the poverty that causes the loss and separation rather than exploting it to meet a demand.

"A dangerous disease requires a desperate remedy." Gay Fawkes

In this case the "desperate renmedy" is perevention in the form of Family Preservation.

God Made Me Do it!

In 2007, I wrote, "Adoption And The Role of the Religious Right" making the connection between the evangelical push from the pulpits to adopt, in part to recruit Christian soldiers, and the NCFA lobbyists for the mega-billion dollar adoption industry.

Now, award winning journalist Kathryn Joyce, author of Quiverfull gives us Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption. The book description follows:

When Jessie Hawkins' adopted daughter told her she had another mom back in Ethiopia, Jessie didn't, at first, know what to think. She'd wanted her adoption to be great story about a child who needed a home and got one, and a family led by God to adopt. Instead, she felt like she'd done something wrong.

...adoption has lately become even more entangled in the conservative Christian agenda.

To tens of millions of evangelicals, adoption is a new front in the culture wars: a test of "pro-life" bona fides, a way for born again Christians to reinvent compassionate conservatism on the global stage, and a means to fulfill the "Great Commission" mandate to evangelize the nations. Influential leaders fervently promote a new "orphan theology," urging followers to adopt en masse, with little thought for the families these "orphans" may already have.

Conservative evangelicals control much of that industry through an infrastructure of adoption agencies, ministries, political lobbying groups, and publicly-supported "crisis pregnancy centers," which convince women not just to "choose life," but to choose adoption. Overseas, conservative Christians preside over a spiraling boom-bust adoption market in countries where people are poor and regulations weak, and where hefty adoption fees provide lots of incentive to increase the "supply" of adoptable children, recruiting "orphans" from intact but vulnerable families.
"The Child Catchers" is a shocking expose of what the adoption industry has become and how it got there, told through deep investigative reporting and the heartbreaking stories of individuals who became collateral damage in a market driven by profit and, now, pulpt command.

Adoption Ghosts and Unlived Lives

Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.   ~ Carl Jung

While Jung did not have adoption in mind when he said these profound words, how interesting to explore the concept within the framework of adoption.

The unlived life of most who adopt is evident and is carried with them forever: the ghost of the child they might have had. It is much of what creates what has become known as the pseudo "postpartum" depression, blues or letdown. The reality, the disappointment and the eternal wonder what a child "of my own" may have looked like, smelled like, sounded like, behaved like.

 That shadow ghost child remains a constant comparison.  I wonder if my child would have liked sports more, as I do; would my child have acted this way or that.

What, they are left to wonder would my life - our lives - have been like had i not been afflicted with infertility, not spent years undergoing painful and expensive tretments, facing disappointment after disappointment, and made to undergo the scrutiny of adoption. 

Adoptive parents live with the uncertainties of not being their child's "real" parents; fear of blood being thicker than water. They often live reactively to the threat of loosing the love and affection of their child to the ghost of the birth parent.

When we morphed gradually from the days of adoptive parents being encouraged not to reveal to their child that they were adopted to more openness and honesty, it was with a belief that telling a child they were 'chosen' would make them feel special and wanted.  How lacking in understanding of the psyche - how indicative of adoption as a social experiment - not to have anticipated that most every adoptee would figure out that being chosen meant having first been given away, unwanted, rejected, abandoned and that that in turn meant there was something inherently wrong with them.  Add to that the constant - very real -  feeling of being constantly compared to the child that did not grow in their mother's tummy...the adoptive parents' "real" child, their ghost child...and you have a whopping dose of feeling unworthy, never good enough.

The adoptee also has the unlived, "fantasy" life they might have had, had they not been placed for adoption.  Who would they be had their original parents found a way to provide a safe home for them to be nurtured in?

And then there is the unlived life of the mothers who loose a child to adoption? The ghost we live with forever...the "what ifs." How would life have been had we received the support we needed not to have had our child amputated from us? That ghost hovers over our every action and reaction, it haunts all of our relationships and it howls at our subsequent children as they wonder if they live up to our yearnings for the missing puzzle piece in our family portrait.

Unlived lives are powerful. Ghosts are daunting and can be relentless and demanding in their haunting and howling to be heard.

Jung knew the power, the influence of the ghosts of unlived lives we live with every day.

Today, we are trying yet another pendulum swing of an experiment with the lives of adopted children: open adoption. In this scenario, when it is done to the fullest and truest extent and not just "identified" adoption called open, where the openness extends beyond a knowing of the two sets of parents to the child.... children grow not with total fantasy unlived lives, 

but are exposed to them.  How will introducing the ghosts, inviting them to sit at our dinner tables play our for this new generation of experimental rat children? 

How will being invited to your ghost mom's wedding be internalized? Witnessing the addition of subsequent children - KEPT children - do to the psyches of these new world adopto-kids? Only time will tell.

We do know that for many mothers involved in these experiments it has meant deceit and betrayal as promises are broken. For others it has meant pain too excruciating to endure...playing our a scene from Thorton Wilder's play "Our Town" where you are the ghost present yet unseen and your child is calling another "Mommy."  Seeing, witnessing, being right there in the center of your unlived life.  Watching the parents who have more to offer and deserved your flesh and blood more than you did. How are they doing, the parents you CHOSE? 

Unlived lives are ghosts that haunt us and effect us in myriad ways - all of us - even when we live in a trance of denial and believe it doesn't matter at all. Our beliefs create a "reality" that can be shattered at any time by the truth. 

Because, what is real is never necessarily true.

You are really my mother; I am really your child.  In this life. In this reality that has been created by the stroke of a pen on a piece of paper. But not in our unlived lives that haunt us and shape us and influence everything we do.

And we wonder why reunification is so fraught with difficulties, when there are four of us reuniting - you and your ghost me and mine....and perhaps the adoptive parents ghosts as well....  

A poem I wrote back in the 80s..... for alicia, my eternal ghost child.... 

DREAM MOTHER

Before you were whole

and really alive

I dreamt of you and I

            together

            forever

That dream was shattered

by a tugging too real to be imagined

they were taking you

            from me

tearing my insides out

I tried to hold on to you

but they pulled you

            from me

I closed my eyes

thinking you'd still be there

where you've always been

            in my dreams

In my dreams where

            I hold you

            rock you and

            comfort you

In my dreams where

I watch you

as you grow into

            a happy child

             gorgeous child

            a brilliant child

A child who laughs

and plays and throws

            kisses to me

because I am always with you

Hush now,

            mamma's here

In my dreams where

you grow taller

and more beautiful

            than ever

In my dreams where

            I am at graduations and

            Engagement parties

In my dreams where

            I am your proud mother…

But then

in my dream

your mother turns

and she's

            not me.

I waken with

            a start

to a nightmare

of emptiness and

            loneliness

soaked with tears

            and sweat

I can recall your

            birth

with vivid sweet pain

but, the rest

the rest

            is it all

            just a dream?

Once I saw you

we spoke

we touched

we broke the cardinal rule:

one mustn't touch

            a dream.

I tried to bring you

            back with me

to my reality

and almost lost you

Hush now,

            mamma's gone

I will not scare you

            again

You needn't run away

I'll go back

and content myself

with my beautiful

dream of you

in which you are

my child

            forever

Reunification of Adoption-Separated Persons

When the media has asked me about reunion outcomes I always tell them that just like all other interpersonal relationships, they run the gamut from great to awful and everything in between and many - as we all know - can go back and forth and back again.  Parent and adult child relationships are difficult as is, but add the baggage of feelings of rejection, guilt, feelings of betrayal, loss, shock, anger, feelings of abandonment....and you've got a powder-keg waiting to explode.

When adoptees or parents who have relinquished ask me about reunion I have often said: Expect nothing except to find the truth. Whatever you find, good, bad or indifferent will be your truth.  I also usually remind searchers that they are proceeding at their pace in their time and readiness, but the person they are finding and seeking to enter into a reunion with is totally unprepared and caught off-guard. They often need time to readjust to this new reality.

Recently, a Facebook conversation led to another point of view.  The views expressed by "Buck Wheat" as she is known online, were so thoughtful and insightful, so  important to share that I asked her to write a guest blog post. 

I hope it opens a healthy and helpful discussion.

Here it is:

Reunion and Expectations

by CV

I hear both moms and adoptees say to enter into reunion with no expectations. I believe this is misguided advice. I also believe it is impossible. I cannot count the number of times I have read or heard adoptees and moms say I had no expectations but it isn’t long before I hear them say what they found wasn’t what they expected! Remember, you are entering into reunion because YOU believe you are ready. Expect that there may never be the perfect time for those you find and they may not be ready.

From my experience and research, here is what I believe we can reasonably expect.

We can expect to find a wounded soul. I know it seems obvious but it’s important to remember because we need to be kind, gentle, and compassionate with the trauma survivor. We can expect that there may be some sort of self-medicating for the pain. Be it drugs (prescription or illicit), alcohol, workaholics, or food. It’s natural for humans to self-medicate and we should not condemn or judge them for it.

We can expect that our “other” (I use the term ‘other’ when referring to adoptees or moms. It is for brevity and not intended to diminish anyone) may not be able to face their pain thus unable to acknowledge ours. It isn’t their fault! People are ready to face it at their own pace and we must respect that. Setting an example of facing our own is all we can really do. Tell anyone who isn’t ready that they might have ‘adoption issues’ and you’ll likely be met with rage. Haven’t we all seen someone scream ‘I’m NOT angry’ complete with the red face, vein pulsing in their forehead after you ask them why they are so angry? It is easy to believe they are being self absorbed, don’t care how we are affected, flawed for not being strong enough to see their own let alone our pain but it is simply fear. There is no value, comfort or healing in taking it personally because it isn’t.

We can expect that people don’t understand the difference between feelings, beliefs, and the truth. This certainly isn’t isolated to adoptoworld. Understanding the differences is critical! By far, this is the most important thing I’ve learned in my journey. It made the difference of feeling crushing pain and despair to understanding and compassion.  Feelings and beliefs fluctuate. The truth is constant. Feelings are happy, sad, angry, shame, etc. Feelings are never wrong, they just are. We need to honor, and validate them. Beliefs are a different matter and it is healthy to question them, it isn’t disrespectful. I find myself explaining these differences most often when talking with moms and adoptees about rejection and abandonment. I am very careful to challenge beliefs, not feelings. I challenge those that say ‘I feel rejected. I feel abandoned’. I do that because those aren’t feelings, they are beliefs! I strongly believe that there is no rejection of people in reunion – ever. It is a rejection of the pain, not us.

We can expect that trauma victims may not know what the truth is. Just because our other says something doesn’t make it true. You will be told their beliefs but they could be false and can’t be assumed the truth. This is counter-intuitive, I know. The brainwashing by society and the adoption industry affects us all at some time to some degree. I lied to myself and lived in denial to survive. The fog is very powerful. It wasn’t long ago that I would’ve said I had a choice, that I had no regrets. Those were my false beliefs and not the truth. As with everything with adoption, you can’t take anything at face value and must look deeper.  Does anyone out of the fog really believe the adoptee that says adoption had no affect on me? Do we believe the rape victim that says it was her fault?

We can expect that we, or our other, may unconsciously sabotage our reunion. This can happen when we believe inherently (often unconsciously) that somehow we are unlovable, that we don’t deserve good things in our life, we can’t trust anyone. How can one not have a seed of the belief of being unlovable when the one who was supposed to love them the most left them? Moms tell themselves they are unlovable because what kind of person gets themselves in a position to lose a child to adoption? We may believe we aren’t worthy of a relationship, that they are better off without us. Our misguided belief of ‘rejection’ may terrify us and give us any reason to ditch our other. A get them before they get me defense mechanism. What can be most confusing is that a pullback can come when reunions are going well. It’s the realization of all that we’ve lost and will never get back that can cause some to put the brakes on. Again, it’s the pain being rejected, not the person.

We can expect that reunion will bring grief to the surface. I didn’t start to grieve the loss of my son until after we met face to face. Grief can cause us to lash out at our other or anyone else. It is akin to having psychological sunburn. Things that would not normally hurt, the slightest touch can cause an extreme pain reaction. The grief can seem never ending. I found making a list helped. Putting it down on paper stopped it from being free-floating. It allowed me to give it the respect and acknowledgement it deserved. I don’t hold back the tears anymore. I hope that one day I’ll discover I don’t need to add to the list anymore.

We can expect that social graces we give and receive from those close to us may not apply in adoptoworld. For example, a friend would return your call or email in a day or two. We need to understand that our other may need time to process, may have an uncontrollable urge to prove that you aren’t that important. You see, we convince ourselves that it hurts less when we diminish the value and importance of our other. Another false belief because trying to ignore our pain certainly doesn’t make it go away. We’d all be pain free if that actually worked!

We can expect that if setting healthy boundaries is hard for us it will be exponentially more difficult with our other. We all have the right to be treated with respect and dignity. It is natural for adoption to cause ‘nuclear’ rage and it could be directed to our other instead of the adoption industry where it belongs. It isn’t fair or right but understandable. Moms need to have compassion and patience for their kids that vehemently exclaim that we had a choice; there wasn’t a gun to your head. Expect that the miniscule exception to the rule, the ‘dumpster babies’, women who just don’t want to parent, abortion will be referenced.

We can expect regression. Moms will often regress to the age when they lost their child. I’ve seen my son regress to the contemptuous teenager, raging toddler and then to the kind, contemplative adult in mere moments. I couldn’t believe the youthful energy I had upon reunion. The downside was that some of the immature attitudes came through as well. The world was once again black and white and not the spectrum of gray that comes with experience and maturity. This wasn’t constant but my younger ‘inner child’ would come through when triggered.  I’m grateful I was able to recognize that when my son said he never wanted to see or speak to me again it was his inner child coming through. If I took him at his word, face value, I would have left him alone and it could’ve been decades before we reconnected again, if ever. I followed the advice of a wise adoptee and continued to send my notes of loving and missing you every month or so. After over a year of silence, he has responded. I know there will be mountains and valleys on our path but I will never give up hope!

We can expect that we can’t travel this journey alone. We need the support and compassion of those that are on the same journey and those that have travelled before us. It takes work to know something intellectually and to know it in our bones. I believe it is our responsibility to face our own pain. I believe we have a duty to learn about our other’s experience and pain, too. Above all, we cannot judge and condemn them for not facing their pain or healing on our schedule. We need to accept where they are. We can only change ourselves.

We can expect that our capacity for love, compassion, and empathy can carry us through. “Perfect maturity is when a person hurts you, and you try to understand their situation and don’t hurt them back. – unknown”

Massive Adoption Fruad

Children removed for REVENGE...orders for children being filled by CPS....incomopetent fosterers allowed to adopt....

ALL FOR FEDERAL BONUS MONEY!!!

A news report EVERY PARENT has to see!!

Make no mistake aboutit, it aint jus' happenin' in Kentucky. It's just being uncovered and reported on there.

Massive adoption fraud in USA for Bush federal adoption funds www.youtube.com