Pushing on a Rope
Adoption
In search of confirmation, validation … and myself
Life doesn’t turn out how you plan — if you can plan at all. I’m reminded of this today, because I’ve reached a tremendous milestone and it doesn’t feel a thing like I expected. Yesterday in the mail came the penultimate (don’t you love that word?) piece of information I needed to be 99% sure … Continue reading
For an adoptee, a few paragraphs bring hope … and validation
It’s been a heck of a week for Jeff. Jeff was born in 1965, nearly a year before me, and discovered at age 41 that he was adopted. Trying to sort out your identity when you’re adopted is difficult enough; I can’t begin to imagine what it must be to process that news in midlife. … Continue reading
No beginning, no end. So how do I tell the story?
In Land of Gazillion Adoptees, Amanda Woolston wrote this week about how adoptees’ scant background information reduces them to stereotypes: The lucky, grateful adoptee. The unwanted baby finally wanted by someone else. A perpetual child. A person with an invisible past. Finding in her adoptive parents’ house some redacted records from her adoption file, Amanda … Continue reading
Another blogger’s thoughts on international adoption and reunion
Elizabeth Foy Larsen’s Sunday Modern Love column in the New York Times, “Untying a Birth Mother’s Hands,” continues to stir comment and debate among natural mothers, adoptees and adoptive parents. There is, after all, a heaping measure of confusion, frustration, pain and other conflicting emotions for everyone involved in adoption. In “Quest for true understanding … Continue reading
Quest for true understanding about the pain associated with adoption
Most Sundays, the New York Times’ Modern Love column makes me smile, or cry. Today’s sent me straight to the keyboard. Elizabeth Foy Larsen’s “Untying a Birth Mother’s Hands,” gets points for having the right instinct — to connect her adopted 6-year-old daughter to her roots — but what it has in heart it lacks … Continue reading
It’s Complicated: An Adoptee’s Road to Search, Part 1
I received a lovely note in my inbox last week: Judy, a friend from my school days, used my story in talking with her 12-year-old adopted daughter Mollie. It seems friends at camp were shocked to discover Mollie isn’t interested in searching for her birth parents. Judy told Mollie that she has Judy’s blessing if … Continue reading
Weather or not, my search goes on
I was not sure what to make of the state of the weather as I set off today to meet the documentary filmmaker working on a film about adoption and adoption search. Just as I reached the train station, the skies opened up — a real monsoon — and there I was with my carefully … Continue reading
Seeking the reflection of my true self
I found myself nodding in agreement this morning reading The Declassified Adoptee. Amanda writes about what it means to have an acquaintance notice the resemblance she and her children share, and what it is like to finally have someone who looks like her. I can definitely relate. Catherine’s birth was a watershed moment for me … Continue reading
Still Daddy’s little girl
Can’t help but smile to think of my dad. Mom was the disciplinarian and Dad played less of a heavy at our house … unless you really crossed the line and then, well, look out. His yelling could be heard for miles. He still can yell, but his bombastic voice is simply a match for … Continue reading
What boobs!
Yesterday’s annual mammogram turned out to be an angst-laden event. No, not because there was any problem, thank goodness. Although standing topless in front of a stranger who is turning your breasts into pancakes is not the most pleasant way to start the day — especially when you keep wondering exactly how long a person … Continue reading
Pushing on a Rope 