Pushing on a Rope
adoptee
Two guiding lights to steer me home
What a day tomorrow will be. I haven’t slept a wink in days, my mind is going a mile a minute and I’m feeling more than a little “green” at the prospect of tomorrow’s lunch. I’m meeting my first mother, Pat, and will surely not be able to swallow a bite. There’s one person who … Continue reading
Flashback Friday — Back to the Future
1972, my sixth birthday. I can taste that cake just by looking at it — it is my standing order year after year. And those crown-shaped candle holders sat on countless birthday cakes in our house .I think they were finally retired sometime ago. The dress, too — I remember loving it, althought today I … 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
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
Making waves on the radio
Can’t thank my friend, Kristen Rzasa, enough for inviting me to be on her show, A Matter of Balance, on ftns.co today to share the story of my adoption search as part of her Mother’s Day show. Having been on television twice, I had taken the invitation in stride (I’ve got a face for radio, … Continue reading
They’re looking into it … Christmas is coming, the check’s the mail. Oh hell, insert your cliche here
Got a letter from Albany this week. Yes, you could have knocked me over with a feather. Oh, not because I think Gov. Cuomo himself actually read my letter and its enclosed copy of my April 6 blog post urging passage of the adoptees’ rights legislation. I suspect some poorly paid intern plugged my name, … Continue reading
A letter to the mother I’ve never known
Dear Patricia: It’s me, Jennifer. I’m here, all grown up with a child of my own, wishing I was speaking to you instead of writing a letter I hope you might see in cyberspace. And today is our day — the day that seals our fate, and continues to toy with our emotions. I hope … Continue reading
Pushing on a Rope 