Helen Gurley Brown Gave Early Ink to Adoption Reform

Helen Gurley Brown in 1964

Helen Gurley Brown was a friend of mine. She was one of the few editors back in the day when I was "coming out" of the birth mother closet who supported me, gave me a pat on the back, and gave me an assignment. It was for Cosmopolitan with Brown as editor-in-chief I wrote my first piece about adoption reform, after reading a story in The New York Times about this woman named Florence Fisher and how she was shaking up adoption and demanding that adopted individuals be given their original birth certificates.

When Birthmark came out in 1979, I happened by the office and gave Helen an autographed copy; she wrote me a nice note later that I must have somewhere in my files. Although she was reviled by some of the feminists for her stance on using sex as a means to security and a better life, Helen went her own way and was certainly a feminist in the Madonna mold.

Not ignoring you, I'm just overwhelmed right now!

East Hampton Main Beach yesterday morning. 

Yo!  I'm in a time-crunch right now and have had to be occupied with projects other than First Mother Forum. My husband and I had a busy time last week getting ready for a 35th wedding anniversary luncheon

When you give up a child--Jane's story

Jane

When I was in the hospital after my daughter Rebecca's birth, I began crying inconsolably. I told a nurse/aide, whoever she was, I was afraid that the people who adopted my daughter wouldn't understand her soul. The nurse/aide shook her head puzzled; it made no sense to her, or frankly, to me either. But the thought did not leave me for some time.

Yet unlike other natural mothers, I never considered therapy. Losing my daughter was something I had to get over by gritting my teeth and trying to forget. A few days after my daughter was born in San Francisco in 1966, my social worker suggested that I find a job. Through a temporary agency I got a job within a month at Blue Cross to assist in Medicaid fraud investigations. I tallied procedures as a nurse read them off from bills doctors had submitted.

RIP: The fire behind adoption reform, Florence Fisher

Lorraine

Florence Fisher, the spark plug who ignited the adoption-reform movement in 1971, died peacefully on Sunday, October 1. She was 95, and in failing health for several months. 

 

While she has long been retired from active work in adoption, she founded the largest adoptee-rights organization, Adoptee Rights Liberty Movement, better known as ALMA, which at its heyday in the Eighties had 50 chapters in cities large and small across America and about 50,000 members. At the time, it was the largest national reunion registry, numbering about 340,000 searching adult adoptees, natural/first/birth mothers and fathers, siblings, aunts, uncles, grandparents and others hoping to find family members. It operated out of walk-up couple of rooms in a midtown Manhattan office building, staffed largely by volunteers and Florence, who welcomed all who climbed those stairs.