Friday, September 08, 2006
This lady needs educating!
...
The following appeared in www.contracostatimes.com
Kelly Corrigan: Rewire your thinking on adoption
I DREAMED of adopting. Actually, I didn't. When I was little, adopting was still an illegitimate transaction that happened in a back alley between people in long overcoats, while a frantic, hysterical teenage girl muffled her cries nearby. The baby was handed over by an intermediary to a sorry couple whom society referred to as "barren." A new family was formed and all the notes, documents, and evidence of a child's biological heritage -- if they ever existed -- were dropped into a fireplace or pushed through the nearest sewer grate on the way home from the surrender, the "making right."
For a hundred years, maybe more, those shadows darkened the perfect solution that adoption can be.
Now, the norm is switching to open adoption, which by it's very name suggests that we can stop whispering like we're gossiping about a sexually transmitted disease or an extramarital affair. Now, there is National Adoption Day, which appropriately, falls on Nov. 19, just before the great holiday of where we give thanks for our blessings. In honor of a 4-year-old I know and love named Joseph, I want to contribute my thousand words to the paradigm shift around adoption.
Joe's mom adopted him from an overweight, inexperienced 13-year-old in the Midwest who didn't suspect she might be pregnant until well into the third trimester. Why would she be? She had only had sex once, in a back bedroom during a party. She never saw the guy again; she heard he was from out of state. Eight months later, her mom took her to the local ER, asking the nurse to check for a stomach ulcer, or maybe even a tumor.
A month away from finishing eighth grade, she was 35 weeks pregnant.
This is where shame usually lays its blanket over everything, disguising -- but not really -- the truth that friends and teachers probably suspected. This is where the story could go either way.
Well, suffice it to say, you can now find Joe in Marin County where he is living "phat" (as the kids say) with a hilarious dog who has finally given in to being ridden like a pony, a sassy, loving mom and a father who is as young at heart as his son. Joe was a cowboy for Halloween and in the days after the big night, he spent more time categorizing his candy than eating it. Chocolates, hard candies, gummies, circular items.
Joe's mom took a long time to come to adoption, as people tend to. She took a thousand shots, saw an acupuncturist, a therapist, and several fertility clinics. She was pregnant three times, through IVF, but could not make it stick. Each pregnancy ended in a D&C. When she looks back on that time, she sees waste. Wasted emotion, wasted energy, wasted savings. She could have spent those years raising kids, being the very thing she so desired: a mother.
But there is a crazy, whatever-it-takes drive to have your own biological child. I have two of my own, and I loved being pregnant and am somehow gratified when I see my eyes in my daughter's face. But when Joe's mom and I talk mommy talk, those things never come up. They just can't compete with the real stuff of parenthood -- the questions from the back seat like "What is betrayal?" "When was the first person born?" and "Who made the world?"
What Joe's mom wants you to see and feel and internalize is that adoption is a viable, even attractive, option that can put a healthy, beautiful baby in your arms without the trauma that often comes with other alternatives for the possibly infertile couple, like IVF. Adoption need not be the last resort, an option you reluctantly turn to when all other measures -- extractions, surgeries, transfers -- leave you exhausted, defeated and penniless. Adoption, even with all its hassles and headaches, can be a perfectly beautiful thing, a true miracle in a world of almosts.
So, for Joe, for his mom, and for that girl who started her senior year in high school last month, let's stop talking about adoption like a consolation prize and start considering it a gleaming gold trophy where the winner is the child.
Reach Kelly Corrigan at kelly@circusofcancer.org. Kelly is online at
www.kellycorrigan.com
But, the best place to write your response - keep it short: letters@cctimes.com
My (written) response (after my blood stopped boiling):
Kelly Corrigan needs to rewire her thinking on adoption and do some proper research before writing an article. Editors should have checked her facts as well.
Adoptions in this country were practiced openly until the 1940’s when states began sealing original birth certificates. Until the recently the majority of adoptions were handled by state and religious agencies – not in “back alleys.”
Open adoption means more than knowing the birthmother – and publicly humiliating her – albeit without giving her name. Open adoption means the mother has an ongoing relationship with her child and is treated with respect, not referred to as “that girl”. A girl too young to have decided to have “had sex” but was more likely date or statutorily raped, or talked into doing something to be “liked.” And the reason she would not know she was pregnant was not because she’s overweight, but because at 13 a woman is too young to have had regular menses long enough to recognize skipped periods.
Finally, adoption is NOT a trophy. It may bring joy to some, but every adoption begins with a tragedy. Sadly, the consolation prize is exactly what it is for a mother who is unable to raise her own child, for a woman who tried every conceivable way to carry a pregnancy, and for a child who does not get to live with his blood kin. It is also a tragedy for thousands of children in foster care who have no families to go home to.
The following appeared in www.contracostatimes.com
Kelly Corrigan: Rewire your thinking on adoption
I DREAMED of adopting. Actually, I didn't. When I was little, adopting was still an illegitimate transaction that happened in a back alley between people in long overcoats, while a frantic, hysterical teenage girl muffled her cries nearby. The baby was handed over by an intermediary to a sorry couple whom society referred to as "barren." A new family was formed and all the notes, documents, and evidence of a child's biological heritage -- if they ever existed -- were dropped into a fireplace or pushed through the nearest sewer grate on the way home from the surrender, the "making right."
For a hundred years, maybe more, those shadows darkened the perfect solution that adoption can be.
Now, the norm is switching to open adoption, which by it's very name suggests that we can stop whispering like we're gossiping about a sexually transmitted disease or an extramarital affair. Now, there is National Adoption Day, which appropriately, falls on Nov. 19, just before the great holiday of where we give thanks for our blessings. In honor of a 4-year-old I know and love named Joseph, I want to contribute my thousand words to the paradigm shift around adoption.
Joe's mom adopted him from an overweight, inexperienced 13-year-old in the Midwest who didn't suspect she might be pregnant until well into the third trimester. Why would she be? She had only had sex once, in a back bedroom during a party. She never saw the guy again; she heard he was from out of state. Eight months later, her mom took her to the local ER, asking the nurse to check for a stomach ulcer, or maybe even a tumor.
A month away from finishing eighth grade, she was 35 weeks pregnant.
This is where shame usually lays its blanket over everything, disguising -- but not really -- the truth that friends and teachers probably suspected. This is where the story could go either way.
Well, suffice it to say, you can now find Joe in Marin County where he is living "phat" (as the kids say) with a hilarious dog who has finally given in to being ridden like a pony, a sassy, loving mom and a father who is as young at heart as his son. Joe was a cowboy for Halloween and in the days after the big night, he spent more time categorizing his candy than eating it. Chocolates, hard candies, gummies, circular items.
Joe's mom took a long time to come to adoption, as people tend to. She took a thousand shots, saw an acupuncturist, a therapist, and several fertility clinics. She was pregnant three times, through IVF, but could not make it stick. Each pregnancy ended in a D&C. When she looks back on that time, she sees waste. Wasted emotion, wasted energy, wasted savings. She could have spent those years raising kids, being the very thing she so desired: a mother.
But there is a crazy, whatever-it-takes drive to have your own biological child. I have two of my own, and I loved being pregnant and am somehow gratified when I see my eyes in my daughter's face. But when Joe's mom and I talk mommy talk, those things never come up. They just can't compete with the real stuff of parenthood -- the questions from the back seat like "What is betrayal?" "When was the first person born?" and "Who made the world?"
What Joe's mom wants you to see and feel and internalize is that adoption is a viable, even attractive, option that can put a healthy, beautiful baby in your arms without the trauma that often comes with other alternatives for the possibly infertile couple, like IVF. Adoption need not be the last resort, an option you reluctantly turn to when all other measures -- extractions, surgeries, transfers -- leave you exhausted, defeated and penniless. Adoption, even with all its hassles and headaches, can be a perfectly beautiful thing, a true miracle in a world of almosts.
So, for Joe, for his mom, and for that girl who started her senior year in high school last month, let's stop talking about adoption like a consolation prize and start considering it a gleaming gold trophy where the winner is the child.
Reach Kelly Corrigan at kelly@circusofcancer.org. Kelly is online at
www.kellycorrigan.com
But, the best place to write your response - keep it short: letters@cctimes.com
My (written) response (after my blood stopped boiling):
Kelly Corrigan needs to rewire her thinking on adoption and do some proper research before writing an article. Editors should have checked her facts as well.
Adoptions in this country were practiced openly until the 1940’s when states began sealing original birth certificates. Until the recently the majority of adoptions were handled by state and religious agencies – not in “back alleys.”
Open adoption means more than knowing the birthmother – and publicly humiliating her – albeit without giving her name. Open adoption means the mother has an ongoing relationship with her child and is treated with respect, not referred to as “that girl”. A girl too young to have decided to have “had sex” but was more likely date or statutorily raped, or talked into doing something to be “liked.” And the reason she would not know she was pregnant was not because she’s overweight, but because at 13 a woman is too young to have had regular menses long enough to recognize skipped periods.
Finally, adoption is NOT a trophy. It may bring joy to some, but every adoption begins with a tragedy. Sadly, the consolation prize is exactly what it is for a mother who is unable to raise her own child, for a woman who tried every conceivable way to carry a pregnancy, and for a child who does not get to live with his blood kin. It is also a tragedy for thousands of children in foster care who have no families to go home to.
# posted by Senior Mom @ 6:34 PM 
