' [Birth Mother] First Mother Forum: January 2016

Friday, January 29, 2016

Adoptive mother shoots down open-records bill

Lorraine
Oops--for all reading now I mistakenly thought this just happened--but it happened last May!  I was in a rush to post because when I saw it come up yesterday, I was outraged. Sorry for the confusion, but my feelings about sealed OBCs are one and the same. --ld

An adoptive mother--Texas State Sen. Donna Campbell--single handedly shot down a bill that would have given anyone adopted in that state the right to their original birth certificates, allowing for the potential to find their natural/birth/biological/first parents, and to learn of any heritable health risks. Sen. Campbell, the adoptive parent in question, pulled the bill back in May, the day it was to be voted on, without explanation.

Hours before the end of the session, the bill's author, Sen. Brandon Creighton, rallied 13 of its co-sponsors, and made a quiet plea to the lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, to put the bill back on the calendar before the deadline at midnight, but to no avail.

Wednesday, January 27, 2016

How do natural mothers end up?

Lorraine
Relinquishing my daughter changed me and not simply because through that act I came to a cause that shaped my life; but the giving up of her made me feel apart from the great forward rush that is a normal life. No one wants to end up like me. No one wants to grow up to be a woman who gives up a baby. No one would wish that for her daughter. Tell someone this fact about yourself and no matter what they reveal, you feel their shudder. You are stabbing at the status quo, disturbing the peace.

The celebratory way adoption is portrayed today—on television, in the movies, in magazines, by the growing list of celebrities who adopt—largely ignores that behind every happy adoption is another mother missing her child, and another family mourning the missing

Thursday, January 21, 2016

The enduring pain of adoption loss

Jane
"Does the pain ever end?" asked a newly reunited natural mother.

"It's always there somewhere," I answered, "but it moves into the background as your relationship evolves."

I thought of this as I was having lunch with Anne, a natural mother friend, the other day. I had known Anne since the early 70's through Oregon politics and the feminist movement. It was only after my reunion 18 years ago that I learned we had something else in common.
Both of us had given up a daughter in San Francisco in the 60's. We went on to marry and have three more daughters. We celebrated our 47th wedding anniversaries in December.

Tuesday, January 12, 2016

What is an 'open' adoption?

First weekend with my daughter, at her home
The other day one of my friends commented that a mutual acquaintance had an "open" adoption, which was news to me. I'd heard the son in question talk knowingly about genetic testing, 23 + Me, etc., and I had assumed that he had undertaken DNA testing--or was considering it--to locate biological relatives. Then my friend added that our mutual acquaintance, the adoptive mother, knew the name of the young man's biological mother. Thus, an "open" adoption.

"She told him [her son] that if he wanted the name, she would give it to him."  I flashed on the remembrance of hearing that she knew the natural/birth mother was from the area where we all lived that I 'd heard a few years earlier, and was anxious that the boy's original mother would want her child back. Worried is the word I remembered. I had not assumed that she knew the woman's name. That had not come up.

So she knew her name all along? And the son knows all about DNA testing, as if he has no other route to his biological family?

Wednesday, January 6, 2016

'Preferred' adoption language is bunk

Lorraine
I remember the exact moment someone I was friendly with corrected my language. She was an adoptive mother who knew my daughter Jane, and she was someone who early on found her daughter's natural mother at the daughter's request--the girl was 12 at the time--when the adoption had been closed. We'd met professionally and had become friends.We'd often had lunch, either alone or with our husbands.

Nothing in the way either of us spoke about adoption had ever been a sticking point. One afternoon I casually said something about "giving up" my daughter. For the first time ever, my friend decided to "correct" my language. Giving up sounds like you are drowning or something, she said. You made an adoption plan, she said. I