update #9 on Kickstarter.

I am placing this update here as well as on my Kickstarter board because I know that not everyone will be able to see the update.  I still haven't figured out who gets sent what, so if you have read it, I apologize for the repeat, but if not, I hope you do.

 

 

This project is about healing.  It is born from the belief that telling one’s story, telling the truth is a road to healing.  I believe the secrecy and shame are like slow internal infections and that it is extremely important to remove them from ourselves.

I have spent the past few days just reading adoption blogs.  There is so much anger in them.  There is good reason for people to be angry.  There has been a lot of harm, a lot of lying done in the name of being good.  Shame and secrecy have lead peoples’ lives for decades.  Once they discover they are not alone and that they didn’t do something because they were bad or sinful, but vulnerable and scared, anger arises in volcanic bursts.

One major focus of the anger is the new cultural norm to label everything a disorder; everyone has a mental illness or a disorder.  Adoptees that were removed from their mothers at birth and never found a sense of belonging have a disorder; this disorder has made them high risk for depression, acting out behaviours, suicide and addiction.  What good does it do to label them with a disorder?  Why not address the cause not the symptoms?  Why not help people understand the feelings, not label them with a disease?

It has long been recognized that “calling it by name” is the first step to recovery or to changing.  My therapist once told me that “emotions are like dogs, you have to call them by name and then tell them to sit.”  That has lead me to naming my emotions, recognizing them for what they are and not labeling myself as sick.

This project is about healing; it is about naming our truths, removing shame and guilt, taking care of ourselves.  To do so we’ll have to name cultural conditions that facilitate our guilt, our shame.  “How could you do this to me?”  “How could you ruin the family?”  I was never asked those questions, my mother never uttered them.  I was lucky.  I read those words a lot in other mothers’ stories.  My guilt came from thinking only someone cold and heartless would give away their own baby.  That is the shame that has directed my life until recently.

Why should everyone else care? They should care because we are talking about healing people, family and community. Our communities have hundreds of people in them wrestling with their own reasons for shame and secrecy, their own reasons to tell stories.  Adoption is just one such issue, the one I care about the most, the one I understand the most.  But it is not the only one.  We need to begin to heal as individuals and as communities.  We need to be a society that embraces grief and makes room for it instead of choosing addictions or other means of shielding our hearts from those strong emotions.  We need to grow; we need to make peace with our world.

So yes, I believe you need to care about this issue, but more importantly you need to care about the issue that strikes at your heart.  If you follow the process of this project, the development of this book you may get an opportunity to witness healing at least that is what I am aiming for.  Join me!

May 26, 2014

photo by Gerard McGovern

What are your criteria for choosing subjects? Purely intuitive on your part?

This is not going to be easy.  I am limiting it to 15 stories because I want some depth and not just single page stories with a photo.  I want a lay out that allows people to understand why and how the process effected life choices from the time of relinquishment to now.   I want to be able to know about reunions, if there has been one.  These are complicated issues and other cultural issues come into play.  I want to cover as many domestic issues as I can.  I want a group that is diverse in many ways including race, ethnicity and class.   So I will interview 25 or 30 women and then choose the ones that placed together help to make as complete a story as I can.

May 27, 2014

I have been doing more research this week, reading more on line as well as reading peoples' stories and watching videos.  This issue of adoption is very complex.   The language used to describe it is controversial and it is all so highly emotional.  I have to take breaks.  Another challenge is focusing in on the original mothers.  The information about adoptees is much more available, whereas, mothers are quieter.
There are some really good sites out there for original mothers.

1. Musings of the Lame; Claudia Corrigan Darcy
2. (Birth Mother) First Mother Forum
3. A Girl Like Her; Ann Fessler

these are just a few, there are many more and there are a lot of interesting people doing really interesting work to help original mothers.   There are also really good collections of birthmother/original mother stories including The Girls Who Went Away, Ann Fessler and  The Other Mother, Carol Schaeffer. 

I have also spent sometime reading Lost Daughters (thelostdaughters.com).  Although written about adoptees it is very important and informative for moms, too. 

Please, if you have a book that you think others should read, list them in the comments of this blog. 

And please, if seeing more information out there on original mothers is important to you, back my Kickstarter.com project.  If you go to Kickstarter.com and type in Greenfield, Ma. you will find my project and video and a way to donate.   I would be very appreciative. 

For those of you who have already done so, thank you so much!

May 24, 2014

Why should people care about this issue?
What does the impact of relinquishing a baby on a woman have to do with the larger society and why do I believe it is something worth writing a book about?

2.7 babies born in the US were given up for adoption in the past twenty years.  That means that 2.7 percent of new mothers were effected by relinquishing a baby for one reason or another.   That is not a huge statistic, however, it does equal a lot of human beings impacted by adoption.  Unfortunately there has not been a lot of research done on either adoptees or biological mothers. Not because of lack of interest, but lack of resources.  But the research that is published implies that adoption is a risk factor when exploring such issues as depression in teens.  There is a significant increase in depression with adopted teens.  There are slightly higher incidents of suicide with adoptees, even a higher percentage of suicides with women who have relinquished a baby. 

I am most interested in the impact on the mother.  Little research has been done on the subject, some good qualitative studies have been published, but not enough.  Women's bodies physically prepare to care for a baby, so even though she might be ready to release her infant intellectually, physically she is not and endures a time of grief which is not supported by the policies.  In order for policies to change, myths do have to be changed, too.  The best way to change myths is to educate people of the realities.  Getting peoples' stories out into the public is a good way to do this. 

Philomena's success is an indication of the interest of the American public  in the subject.  It did help that Judy Densch starred in the role, but the story itself was poignant and relatable to others and disturbing.  Baby theft under the guise of sin is not ok.  Other books are available, The Adoption Reader, Edited by Susan Wadia-Ells, The Girls Who Went Away, by Ann Fessler, and several others collect stories of the Adoption Triad.  

My book will be different in its focus and its format.  Adding the photography should make women more real, more like your next door neighbor, for she is your next door neighbor.  I will focus on the impact of loss, how grief is addressed and if, when and how reunions effect the grief.  Grief is not well addressed in this culture, which is part of the problem.  We are asked to buck up, go back to school or work, put it in your past.  We are not taught how to embrace it and accept it and make it part of our fabric.  This book will help us understand the importance of embracing grief.   This book looks at a larger problem, the avoidance of loss and grief in our lives through the stories of women whose baby has been placed with someone else to raise a subset of women who deal with "complicated grief", on-going grief in our time.

Grief: A Color in the Blanket

 

You know that brown

like a heather brown,

color of the fields just before snow arrives.

There’s some morning light

washing over it. Beautiful, one

must lull in it, make it part of

the giant picture.

 

We don’t want to embrace grief.

We want to rub it off our skin

as fast as we can.

When we think she might be

driving near, we want to hide in our

neighbor’s house until she goes away,

laughing, joking and drinking,

pretending we don’t see her sitting

there waiting for us by the kitchen

window like the ghost that Daddy saw

nightly across the way in the Ryan’s house.

 

But we need to embrace her

We need to call her up

Ask her to come spend a night

Feel her veil as we listen to Mahler.

She is very important to us.

She is a major part of who we are

If we ignore her, we leave caverns in our own

selves to fall into,

get caught in the dark.

 

She is the grey of a July

foggy evening when you are

trying to see the sandpipers

hop along the tide line. 

She is gentle and can lull you

into silent tears, silent pain.

 

She is the dark blue black of 2 a.m.

in winter when the moon is new.

The temperature increasingly colder,

she grabs your ears

pushes through your pants,

tightening your thighs,

pinching your toes,

your nose and your belly.

 

Remember grief climbs up your trellis

uncontrollably when you ignore her.

 

May 22, 2014

Auspices day for me to begin this blog for it is Jason Whiton's birthday. Jason was born when I was twelve years old to my oldest brother and his wife. Things were not easy for the young couple and Jason soon came to live with my family and spent the rest of his life as the youngest member of the clan. He was seven when I delivered my daughter. He didn't understand why I didn't bring her home, "I thought I wouldn't be the youngest any more." he said to me when he realized I didn't have the baby in my arms. He would have been a great big brother to her, but it wasn't destined.

I am starting this blog because it was suggested to me by people in the know that a blog would help my Kickstarter.com project, Creating the Strength to Speak about the courage to say good-bye.  What I will do is answer questions that have been posed to me.  It will also have other pieces of information and photographs of interest.
stay tuned.  I'm on my way....