' [Birth Mother] First Mother Forum: August 2016

Monday, August 29, 2016

Adoption never strays far from my life

Kate and Geoff leaving the ceremony 
You just never know what's going to happen when you are as public as I am about my daughter lost to adoption and my passion for changing adoption, and Facebook.

Case A) A lawyer in my village of Sag Harbor of friendly but usually only a passing acquaintance told me one day that years ago he handled an adoption and he has kept all the papers with the names intact IN CASE someone (as in the mother or the grown-up child) returns asking for information.

He will give it to whomever arrives, no questions asked (as long as no one is an axe-murderer).  He understands that it is absurd that mother and child are not allowed to know one another under current laws. I have no more

Wednesday, August 24, 2016

'Our Little Sister' a tender study of family and kinship

Sisters greeting an unknown sibling who shares one parent is the subject of Our Little Sister, a Japanese film now in art theaters. Adoption is not part of this story, yet the issues were close enough to the bone I was glad to be sitting in the dark, alone, with no one near me. They would have wondered how this deeply charming and quietly moving film would have elicited deep feelings in me. Some people might simply get misty eyed as the film ends, but I slipped my sunglasses on as I left to hide the outright tears.

Let's get on with the story: Three sisters, now grown and working, were left by their father 15 years earlier when he had an affair that produced a daughter, Suzu, now an adolescent. Suzu was living with the father, and a new wife in a distant village when he died. The three sisters travel by train to funeral, and Suzu, the little sister, meets them at the station, walks them to their hotel, and quietly says goodbye.

Wednesday, August 17, 2016

Genetic mother denied visitation with son conceived in vitro

Jordan Schnitzer, father of the year. NOT. 
Jordan Schnitzer wanted a son without the bother of a mother. After two attempts using "donated" eggs, Schnitzer, 65, the divorced father of two teenage daughters turned to his 37-year-old girlfriend Cory Sause. She happened to have some eggs frozen just in case... and she agreed to share them with Schnitzer. After a surrogate became pregnant from Schnitzer's/Sause's embryo/DNA, their relationship soured.

Their son was born in December and they are now embroiled in litigation on whether egg mother Sause can have visitation with her biological son. Schnitzer's position is absolute: He is the sole and exclusive parent. His name alone is on the birth certificate. Biology be damned.

Tuesday, August 9, 2016

Simone Biles' commotion over her (adoptive) parents

Simone at work
Simone Biles, one of the stars of the Olympics, is at the source of a huge kerfuffle regarding what adoptive parents deem as acceptable language when it comes to them. Al Trautwig, a NBC commentator, referred to her briefly by saying she was raised by her grandfather and his wife and she calls them mom and dad. He also said that she was adopted by them. He also tweeted: “They may be mom and dad but they are NOT her parents,” he wrote in a since-deleted tweet.

Well, you'd think that he had thrown out a bomb. It was bold, I'll admit and I wonder what prompted him to go that far--that is, CAP the NOT. Maybe he was being nudged to diminish or hide her back story, and he said, Wait a minute, that's not the true story. Maybe he is the biological father of a child who was adopted. Maybe he wanted to raise his own child and was denied that. Or maybe, he had already been criticized for acknowledging that she was adopted by her grandfather and step-grandmother and he was irritated by the sensitive souls who had taken offense and were already complaining about hearing the truth, a prospect that I as a journalist find plausible. Who knows?

Monday, August 8, 2016

DMC: Room for two mothers in his life

Jane, DMC, and Jeanette Roberts at AAC 3-8-07
I met the rapper, Darryl McDaniels ( DMC)  in 2007 when I attended the annual conference of the American Adoption Congress in Boston with my good friend and fellow first mother Jeanette Roberts. In truth I had never heard of DMC and knew nothing about rap music. I learned he was a late discovery adoptee and an advocate for opening records.

I bought his just published book Ten Ways Not to Commit Suicide: A Memoir because I wanted to learn more about his adoption experience and as way of thanking him for standing up for adoption reform and taking the time to pose with me and Jeanette in a picture. I'm glad I did.

Tuesday, August 2, 2016

When death reveals a secret child

Full moon.
Thursday and Friday I helped clean out the home of a neighbor and friend who died in December.

With the emptying of the house, my husband and I are also losing a family that became a stand-in for my own distant family, and for Tony's too. And the neighbor--the grande dame of her family--was my friend, but a friend who I discovered shortly before she died, was a mother like me. A mother who gave up a child.

I've written about Yvonne several times before, for we had legendary arguments about whether someone who is relinquished and adopted should find their biological family. We wrote