7rin on adoption

Links to threads that have exploded, and which demonstrate aptly the attitudes displayed towards adoption and adoptees.

The Skeptical Mother's Page posted a picture of a very young bmom with her newborn baby daughter, just before she hands her over to the adopters.

I'm gonna try to tidy this up to make it more readable, but I suspect if the thread continues, it's gonna wind up being dumped in comments too because I'm gonna run outta character spaces.

How do you feel about adoption?

Jennifer Randazzo Good.

Gloria Orange-Barnett The gift of a safe and loving home to a child in need is truly a gift to oneself.

Lynn Early Brown It is truly a blessing...I was adopted as an infant and my husband and I have adopted both our children thru foster-to-adopt! It is amazing and a gift from God!

Liz Larson-Shidler The best alternative.

Linda Wallin Thrilled! My son comes home from India today with his new son!

Angela Jensen Dunigan We are in the process of my husband adopting my daughter, which will legalize what has already existed for the past nearly 6 years - their father-daughter relationship. I love that she will now have our name too. She's 13 and I can think of no more critical an age for her to have this security of a loving, legal father. I also have loved ones with children whom they adopted at birth. I'm a fan of adoption.

( ...and then the adoptees start answering )

by Heather Lowe

One of the things I hear most frequently from parents who have recently lost children to adoption is, "If ONLY I had known." People in a crisis pregnancy are especially prone to denial, and it's very hard to accurately imagine what adoption will be like. I am posting these items in an effort to share the things I wish I had known when I was considering adoption (and was stuck in major denial myself.)
Adoption might well be the best thing for you and your child, but in order to be a truly good thing, it needs to be a well-considered decision, and you need to hear the negative aspects as well as the positive.

This list will likely change and grow as input from other first parents is received. Please visit the guestbook on my website if you are a first parent wanting to add advice to this site.

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( Read more... )

Note: The terms "unwed" mother, "birthmom", "biological" parent make a parent appear to be less than the mother or father they are. These terms dehumanize and limit the parent's role to that of an incubator. Using the honest terms "mother", "single mother" or "natural mother" help the public to understand why real family members must not be separated to obtain babies for adoption.

Adoption Truth
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2012

Two Kinds Of Help

So, we've all been there. We've all heard it at some point or another . . .

When you dare to talk about adoption outside society's accepted views of rainbows and sunshine, you will be told, more than likely many, MANY times, that you need to seek help. That you are somehow sick and unhealthy for your views and opinions and should seek counseling so you can just be "happy" and accept adoption like everyone else does.

It's ironic, to me, when someone makes such a suggestion because I have actually sought help twice in my life.

The first was when I was sixteen and pregnant and trusted my adoption counselor to help me make the best decision for myself and my unborn child. At that time, I never imagined that their counseling was the same counseling they offered every pregnant mother who walked through their doors.

It was not about my own personal situation. It wasn't about me or my child. It was about how best to convince me to see adoption as a loving, selfless option so I would give up my child to the waiting couple who was willing to pay to adopt him.

I could have been Jane Doe from Anywhere, U.S.A. It didn't matter. The counseling would have been the same. Just as it still is to this very day for any vulnerable, pregnant mother trusting her counselor to help her make the right decision for herself and her baby.

Read the rest of the post over at Adoption Truth.

As posted by Lizzy Brew in You know you're an adoptee when ...


Pathological Grief, suffered by mothers separated from their baby, in Submission of Dr G Rickarby, consultant psychiatrist, to the NSW Parliamentary Inquiry - highly recommended read for those wanting to understand the experience of the loss of their 'birthmother':

"Pathological grief refers to distinct and major failure of (the normal grieving) process. After loss of the baby, the first stage of shock, numbness and disbelief may persist because the mother cannot face the finality of loss of her baby and the feelings of rage, guilt, depression that might overwhelm her. The numbness and disbelief are protective against this emotional second stage of grief. This may persist for a long time and may be associated with naive beliefs that the baby will be returned or some `nice' social worker will appear to help the return.

Many find the next stage, which they enter after they accept finality of the loss, produces such anger and despair they revert to the first stage, and I have seen this see-saw between the two occur over two or three decades, and associated with decompensation in Major Depression.

Others stay in the second stage of major feelings: they cannot accept the implications of their loss and thus cannot mourn. This arrest is not understood and people readily become irritated with them as they return to the issues of their arrested grief. At The Inquiry there will be many with this type of damage and their presentations will represent for them the first attempts to look at implications of their loss in the social world. Such damage is to be seen in the context that when a mother loses a child from babyhood to middle age, and the loss is untimely and has other bad outcome features, the most stable and mentally healthy person becomes similarly afflicted.
Others are stuck in the stage of mourning, going back again and again to the same issues where they cannot get satisfactory answers."

Adopted in the UK - UK Adoptees

Yahoo! Answers' Adoption section

Channel4's Adoption Experience

Lorelei - My adoption story (as a birth mother) *a long read*