' [Birth Mother] First Mother Forum: July 2013

Wednesday, July 31, 2013

'I know people who would like to kill you.'

Birthmark jacket photo
Continuing the story of what it was like in 1979 and after when I published Birthmark, the first memoir from a mother like me (always looking for the correct word!)...the following from the memoir I'm working on, Hole in My Heart, covers some of the up close and personal reactions that the first memoir generated: 
(Copyright, Lorraine Dusky 2013. May not be reprinted, copied, etc in any media)   

Despite the rancor surrounding mothers like me then and still today, I also met many, even in 1979, who immediately understood the poignancy of a mother and child reunion. A headline in The Detroit News read: “Unwed mom has never stopped looking.” From Vancouver, British Columbia, in The Province: "Changing her mind not enough, which was basically an interview with two adoptive mothers and proclaimed that adoptive parents received "as much medical knowledge of the child's parents as possible." The Whig-Standard in Kingston, Ontario: "Obsessed by Guilt." An excerpt of the Birthmark ran in Family Circle under these words: “I GAVE AWAY MY BABY.” Totally appropriate, I thought. No fudging with the story line or the language there. That excerpt prompted

Sunday, July 28, 2013

Meeting anger over coming out as a birth mother head on


Lorraine
The conversation about the previous post led to me saying that it could best be answered by posting what preceded that in the memoir I'm working on, Hole in My Heart. This segment is about what happened before I found a publisher for Birthmark, the memoir I wrote in the late Seventies. It was published in 1979; the first scene below would be in the summer of 1978. Plus, as I am trying to finish this draft ASAP, I do not have the time to post much original material, so I hope in this next month you bear with me.

(Copyright, Lorraine Dusky 2013. May not be reprinted, copied, etc in any media with  permission)

The guy is red in the face and so angry he is practically spitting at me as he talks, his voice getting loud enough to attract attention from nearby tables. He’s just found out that I am one of them—a mother who gave away a child—and furthermore that is the topic of the manuscript his boss, Don Fine, an editor who

Friday, July 26, 2013

Confronting the shame upon admitting I gave up a child

Lorraine
What was it like coming out of the closet when it was very lonely out there? In the late 1970s, only a small handful of women, spoke openly about this "shameful" deed we had done in the national media. What was shameful was not sleeping with someone we loved, the shame was that we had given up our babies. 

Adoptees sometimes cannot understand why their mothers are so traumatized that they cannot deal with the reunion, or the reality of their child, now grown, now an adult. For many of us, that deep sense of shame and humiliation that we felt when we gave up our children now comes back in full force, and we ourselves do not understand why the reunion is so deeply disturbing. To try to explain what it was like in the Seventies to come out publicly, I am post an excerpt from the memoir, Hole in My Heart, that I am working on (and hope to be finished with very soon). The year is

Monday, July 22, 2013

Adoptive parent shares thoughts on having returned a girl to her mother

NEW COMMENTS FROM JAY, BELOW ON 7/23/13

Received tonight as a comment at the last Baby Veronica post, but it is too worthwhile to leave as a comment alone:

A tree after Storm Sandy; the link not broken to the trunk
Jay Iyer said...Thanks for this comprehensive, sad post. I am writing as an adoptive parent of a boy who was taken from an abusive family and placed in foster care. I also write as a foster parent who helped reunify a little girl with her mother. These experiences helped shift my vision from an adoptive path focused on securing for myself a long-desired child to one of recognizing the importance, to a child, of an upbringing integrated with biological identity. I feel that adoption should occur only when all avenues for placement within a child’s biological family are exhausted. Much as I adore my son, I felt a profound loss on his behalf when no safe “forever” home was found among members of his first family.

Sunday, July 21, 2013

Surrogacy today: The American Way?


Lorraine her daughter Jane, third meeting in 1982.
At a ladies lunch the other day: One woman, brought by a friend but unknown to the rest of us, describes how her gay friends had children. First, one of the partners had a child with a surrogate, a little girl. Origin of egg is uncertain at this point, but probably from a third party; I hesitate to ask. I don't want to be a part of this conversation but there I am, drinking iced tea.

My friends all know my status. One woman present has, in a moment of inebriated anger, called me a "reproductive agent," a phrase I am certain she got from the grandparents of children adopted from Russia, her close friends. I know, it's terrible,

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

'Baby Veronica' adoption will go forward

Dusten Brown and his daughter, Veronica. The Washington Post
Getty Images 
For Later Posts: 

Dusten Brown continues to fight for his daughter; the Capobiancos dig in deeper

Adoptive father John Roberts: Not impartial in the Baby Veronica case



Baby Veronica, now nearly four, will be taken from her natural father and returned to the couple who want to adopt her, Matt and Melinda Copabionco of South Carolina, following a 3-2 decision today by the South Carolina Supreme Court. Her natural mother, according to her attorney, is "over the moon."

This comes only weeks after a decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that held that Dusten Brown, and his daughter, Veronica—both citizens of the Cherokee Nation—were essentially not protected under the Indian Child Welfare Act. After that ruling, Brown  attempted to adopt his own daughter in Oklahoma, where he has been living with her for the last 18

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

For me, for some, 1966 was a very bad year

Lorraine
After getting so many emails and letters from so many adoptees over the decades who wish they had not been given up, not been adopted, it's rather...refreshing to learn that some of our readers are so very fine with the situation of growing up in a different family other than the one they were born to. (See comments at previous blog.) Also writing are mothers who feel their children were not negatively affected by being adopted, or saying they did not feel that damaged by relinquishing their children. Certainly all this helps explain why movement on opening sealed records has been so slow in so many states--what's the problem? Also adding to the apathy of opening sealed birth records to the adopted is that more and more of them from the last few decades have full access to, and knowledge of who their original mothers. 

Sunday, July 14, 2013

To the mother and child, adoption is always painful

Lorraine as a three or four year old
I met a woman on a trip last year and while we spent quite a bit of time together--with our husbands too--when she asked what I wrote, I just said "women's issues." We were on vacation, and I did not know enough about her to know whether her children were adopted, or even if she were. And I just didn't want to go there. Say you gave up a child for adoption, and the music stops. Say you write about "women's issues," and you are taken as a serious person. Instead of adoption, I talked about the books I've written about how women are often treated in the legal system, in contrast to men, and a study I did about women in the corporate world.

So much easier.

But we stayed in touch, via email--her name is the same as my daughter's--and a year later, I did tell her about my daughter, my memoir about giving her up, my work today. My faraway friend had searched me on the Internet but hadn't paid much

Thursday, July 11, 2013

How to address your first/birth mother/father when writing the first letter

Ms. Dusky would have felt weird
When writing the first letter to your first mother how do you address her? There are many ways to go about this, and each conveys a different message. Dear Mrs. Jones? Dear Darlyne? Dear Mother?

Adoptees as a group say they want different things from their original parents: some want a relationship, some only want information. I often wonder however, if saying one only wants information isn't protective cover: If one's first/birth mother doesn't want a relationship, the adoptee may feel that writing and asking only for information preserves some of his dignity because that clearly signifies there is no need to worry about him showing up on the woman's doorstep. But in doing that, one may put one's mother off and she may feel diminished, when that is not what the adoptee has in mind at all.

Tuesday, July 9, 2013

Family ties broken by adoption, linked by sychronicity

Jane
I'm off to Peru with Rachael, the daughter of my surrendered daughter Rebecca. Rachael was in Peru a couple of years ago on a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. She's taking this trip to visit the friends she made in Peru and asked me to come along. I am thrilled to be going.

I have never been to Peru, but it has a connection to the adoption of Rachael's mother. When I was six months pregnant with Rebecca in the fall of 1966, I left my home in Fairbanks, Alaska, traveled down the west coast stopping in Juneau, the Canadian city of Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, and Seattle before settling in  San Francisco where I knew no one.

Tuesday, July 2, 2013

The lie behind the question: Aren't those kids better off adopted?

Jane
Aren't kids better off adopted? That's the underlying argument of adoption apologists who feel the answer is an obvious yes. "Maybe mothers were misled about adoption or fathers were tricked by Utah's laws into losing their rights, but at the end of the day, aren't the kids better off with living in an intact family with more money who can give them better opportunities?"

Now that shame no longer propels young women to give their babies to strangers, the adoption industry relies on "better off" to acquire children. Mothers aren't giving up their babies; they are giving them more. American Adoptions, for example, claims that: "...birth mothers are choosing life for their child--a life complete with all of the hugs, laughter and lullabies that they desire for them.... Birth mothers place their babies into the arms of eternally grateful