An Update on Rachael

I received a nice Christmas card from Rachael, my surrendered daughter Megan’s 20 year old daughter. This is the first communication I’ve had with Megan’s family in over four months. In August Megan asked me to stop sending her children birthday presents which I had been sending for a decade. I honored her request and didn’t send Christmas presents as well.

I hope Megan explained to her children why Jane was no longer sending gifts. I’m Jane, not grandma to them. Megan’s adoptive parents are on Rachael’s genealogy chart in the grandparent position. Rachael is proud of the fact that she is descended (sort of) from people who came up the Mormon trail. It doesn’t hurt me that Rachel doesn’t give me the privilege of being her grandma. She is a fine young woman and I’m happy to know her.

Mormons are big on adoption. The LDS Church pressures single women to surrender their babies or jeopardize their child’s chance to enter the celestial kingdom. Mormon Mother Marie Osmond has produced two songs “From God’s Arms to My Arms to Yours” and “Delivery” ("I delivered you from Heaven, from God's gentle loving care /And I've entrusted you to mortals who have wished and prayed you there”) to encourage these women to give up their babies.

Marie is not exactly a poster woman for Mormon Motherhood, though. According to Wikipedia, she married young and had a bio child; then divorced and re-married in the LDS temple. She and her second hubby adopted a child, had a bio child, adopted three more children, and had another bio child. Marie had a breakdown after the birth of the last child which she attributed to post-partum depression. She wrote a book about depression, “Behind the Smile”. She then adopted another child, making a total of three bios and five acquireds.

Several years later, tabloids reported that Marie attempted suicide. She and her second hubby divorced. One of her adopted sons entered drug rehab at age 16. It’s hard to imagine that these adopted kids would have been any worse off if God had left them in their natural mothers’ arms.

PS The Daily Bastardette has the video of Mormom Mother Marie singing the songs.