Why I won't miss Barbara Walters

Lorraine

Barbara Walters--as everyone with a television set know--retired the other day with a great deal of fanfare on the tube acknowledging her role as someone who pioneered women in broadcasting. I watched The View wondering if there would be a mention of her adopted daughter because Walters rarely if ever mentioned her. Nada.

But earlier that day on Good Morning America Walters read a message from her daughter, Jackie, that made her eyes mist, as I learned later from a clip: "I just wanted to say I was thinking of you tonight. Tomorrow is a special day. You have impacted this world as very few can. This is a transition towards a new journey. I love you and wanted you to know how proud I am of you." 

Philomena: The Book

"These things did tale place" said Steve Coogan on The View. Coogan wrote the script for the Oscar-nominated film Philomena and played Martin Sixsmith the journalist who helped Philomena Lee find her son, Anthony, placed by Irish nuns for adoption in the United States in 1955.

Yes, these things did take place and they still do. The players are different: social workers and lawyers have replaced nuns as marketeers of children. Unwed mothers-to-be are no longer hidden away in convents but coerced through slick marketing campaigns to give their children away so they can have "a better life." Adoption records continue to be closed in most states. Children in foreign countries are still sold to Americans whose only qualification as parents is their ability to pay large fees. Records for these children are often non-existent or false. Unlike American adoptees who may find their birth families through the Internet and search angels, foreign-born children may never learn anything about their origins.

You are only as sick as the secrets you keep

Carrie Fisher, in touting her book and one-woman show, Wishful Drinking, on The View this morning, said that revealing the truth about yourself makes it impossible for others to hurt you. "You are only as sick as the secrets you keep," she said.

She went on to list her particular maladies--years of drinking and drugs before rehab, being bipolar, bed-hopping (sounds like an aerobic exercise, joked Joy Behar), marrying a guy who became gay, and I thought, Wow, keep going, add the really big one: Giving up a child for adoption. That's a lot bigger than drugs and rehab. Of course, she didn't because I don't think that's on her "been there, done that" list. But I kept ruminating about the wisdom of her words: "You are only as sick as the secrets you keep."

Once you tell your husband/children/neighbors/friends that you have given a child up for adoption--no one is going to whisper behind your back...Do you know she did? She gave up a child for adoption--because what is the point of whispering?

Tell your family now and it won't come back to bite you later on. Without any scientific evidence whatsoever and only anecdotal information to go on, I believe that is at the heart of the first/birth mother rejections that we hear about and that are so damaging and hurtful to the individual who has been given up.

Hiding the truth from your loved ones doesn't put any trust in your relationship with your family because you feel you will be rejected if they only knew the truth about you. Yes, it's not a great thing to have to tell anyone because it's not a great thing to have done, we know, we know, we have been there, but it is a part of who you are today, and who you will be tomorrow. And being open about it will make your load so much lighter.

If you feel the sting of hurt from your husband/family after you tell them what has been the secret in your heart, it is because they will feel they have been lied to by omission, and that you felt the relationship was not strong enough to bear this secret. Trust them, trust your love enough to tell the truth. Explain how shamed and awful a thing you felt you did, and how that led you to bury this all these years. Ask them to understand how different it was when you had your child. Ask them for their forgiveness--for not having told them sooner.

If you are afraid, think how good it will be to not have to keep this secret. You are only as sick as the secrets you keep.

If you think you can not do it, think: I can do this one thing for that child. My child.
If you stumble before you get the words out, think: I can do this one thing for my child. I will acknowledge her/his existence. I could not keep him/her, but I will acknowledge his/her life. And I will accept her/him if I am fortunate enough to know her/him one day.

And do it. Remember, you've got a lot of company. Six million adoptees were not delivered by the stork.--lorraine
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Remember Anita Tedaldi? The woman who adopted and terminated the adoption when she and the child did not bond? Here she is on the Today Show this morning.  I don't have anything to add that has not been said before elsewhere, but you have to ask, why in the world was Anita Tedaldi, with five biological children, and a husband who apparently is deployed somewhere, allowed to adopt in the first place? Did not the agency think that maybe the woman already had had hands full? This story originated in the New York Times and this evening I noticed that the comments were closed after more than 300. But it you care to read Number 317, you'll find another woman considering the same thing: sending back a child she can't bond with.

Madonna Maternal Madness: Will the adoptions never stop?

Just a short rant on Madonna today because Ya know, I've had it with these celebrity adoptions that make every teenager and young woman coming down the pike thinking that adopting some infant from a "poor family" or a "poor county" such as Nepal is deserving of some friggen medal. Given the way things are going today, Mary would have been urged to give up her child...as she and Joseph were so very poor--not even a proper bed to be born into. Some better-off family would have adopted Christ and he would not have had to turn water into wine, or feed a thousand with a few loaves and fishes. But I digress.
Filippo Lippi - Madonna and Child with two angels Picture @ Uffizi Gallery, Florence


Each one of these celebrity adoptions sets up a whole chain on other adoptions, and from what we have seen about the corruption in international adoption (which apparently most of the world is oblivious to---like folks, read Mother Jones and its revealing story about kidnapping for hire in India to provide healthy cute infants for Americans; Foreign Policy or, for that matter, FirstMotherForum this past month here and also here and here for a poppin' eyeful about the dark and seemly side of international adoption. And over at Daily Bastardette, Marley has a good blog about the Madonna Madness for Mercy (the girl's name) the Material Girl now wants to... ahem...buy.

Yes, I mean that word. Buy. That is what it comes down to. Madonna will go to Malawi, spend some money there for an orphanage or a school, and then whadda you know, come back with a child! It that isn't filthy lucre in exchange for a baby, then I'm the Queen of Sheba not a poor wretch eking out a living writing.

Friday we will find out if the Material Girl from Michigan (my home state, I am embarrassed to say) gets to take Mercy back to England, over the wishes of her grandmother and other family members..This from USA Today earlier in the week:

Mercy James' grandmother, 61-year-old Lucy Chekechiwa, is reportedly against Madonna's decision to adopt. (Mercy James' single teen mother died at age 18; the girl's father is believed to be alive.)

"Why doesn't this singer pick other children?" she told Britain's The Sun. "It is stealing. I want to go to to court. I won't let her go."

Well, like Wow, Madonna, I know you are promising to dump some money in Malawi, where you got your last child, and yes, probably do some good, but now we have a family member actively asking you not to adopt this little girl. You say you have had your eye on for quite a while--why not pick a kid who doesn't have a family--are they not so cute, do they have problems, are they sickly?

You say your son needs a companion who looks like him, but is this the way to solve that problem? You could bring over a whole village of kids--hell, the whole country is poor, bring them all over to your pad in merry ole England. That is the attitude I sense from the wanna-be adopters who filter through my life in more abundance than I would wish on my enemies: Hey, the family is poor, we are not, so....won't the kid have a better life with us?

Well, maybe not. Being adopted costs a great deal of psychic damage to both the child and her/his mother you have not considered. And note I said "family": the attitude now is that fully formed families with poor kids would be better off letting them go so that the child can have a life with more stuff in it.

I'm still feeling cranky from the Dear Prudence letter over at Slate we've been talking about, which yes, as Mairaine noted, did have some good advice in it. What got me going was the insensitive way it was handled and signed that was so demeaning to the birth mother. And then I heard that The View on ABC had a discussion about the Madonna fracas this morning from a friend whom I've educated about international adoption.(You can see the clip at The View's site--at least we no longer have Loud-Mouth Adopter Number One there, Rauncy Rosie, and that is a blessing, but of course...Elizabeth and others are mostly in favor of letting the kid be taken from her native land. Joy Behar, bless her, had some doubts.)

I was not intending to rant on about Madonna's Maternal Madness, but I couldn't help myself after hearing that it has become topic du jour with way too many people saying, Yeah, girl, you go there and get another kid...Happy April Fool's Day....--lorraine (not so happy)
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Look for post from Linda on Friday about her daughter on Facebook. A page she is denied access to, while other family members are not.