November 17, 2014

Adoptees "Flip The Script" on National Adoption Month** (Extended Version) ** Please watch-Important

Earlier I posted an abbreviated video on this subject. This video is extended and explains so much in such a short period of time. I could write a post on what each of the women in this video say, I agree to the tee with all of them and would love to expand. If only people actually wanted to hear from adoptees when speaking about adoption...

The conversations that could come from this could be numerous and insightful beyond words. Easy to break down into smaller conversations, and easy for commenter's here to jump into the conversation~you just have to be willing.

September 14, 2014

Emotional Hearing from Mother and Baby Homes Delegation

THIS is women's history. This is NOT a thing of the past, it just has a happier face slapped on it now. Poor and at risk mothers deserve to mother their children, not be preyed upon by a multi-billion dollar adoption industry.

August 6, 2014

Comment: Money, fertility tourism and the new human trafficking

Goodness I wish I could post the entire article.
The final paragraph and the last sentence certainly speak loudly~but who will choose to hear?

July 22, 2014

DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM~ from a survivor of the Irish homes for girls

~posted in full with permission from the author~

Maria is a fb friend of mine and a tireless advocate on behalf of adoptees and mothers of loss. She had her daughter taken from her from an Irish home for girls, but she is now in reunion. Her daughter also works to have the UN do a proper investigation of the crimes committed in Ireland.

I am thrilled that the movie, Philomena was made. But you know we are all aging, when will the story of American girls/women be made? I want justice, but right now just the telling of our stories~and people actually hearing what we say~will go a long way.

I know we have some screenwriters here. I beg you to read, 'The Girls Who Went Away' by Ann Fessler and see if it doesn't move you to work with her to get our stories out.

July 22, 2014

When you can't find a birth record

We all know the importance of finding documentation about the facts we put into our family tree. But, what happens when you can't find the records you need? Join Crista Cowan for a look at alternative places to find birth information.

This event happens on July 22nd @ 1 pm EDT (10:00 am PDT).

Click JOIN here to RSVP for the event and receive reminders via Facebook.
https://www.facebook.com/events/658271750924149/?sf3805043=1

June 17, 2014

Jean Paton and the Struggle to Reform American Adoption -

Jean Paton and the Struggle to Reform American Adoption

One woman’s tireless crusade for better understanding and social justice for adopted people -

Description


Adoption activist Jean Paton (1908–2002) fought tirelessly to reform American adoption, dedicating her life to overcoming American society’s prejudices against adult adoptees and women who give birth out of wedlock. From the 1950s until the time of her death, Paton wrote widely and passionately about the adoption experience, corresponded with policymakers as well as individual adoptees, promoted the psychological well-being of adoptees, and facilitated reunions between adoptees and their birth parents.

She also led the struggle to re-open adoption records, creating a national movement that continues to this day. While “open adoption” is often now the rule for adoptions within the United States, for those in earlier eras, adopted in secrecy, the records remain sealed; many adoptees live (and die) without vital information that should be a birthright, and birth parents suffer a similar deprivation. At this writing, only seven of fifty states have open records. (Kansas and Alaska have never closed theirs.)

E. Wayne Carp’s masterful biography of Jean Paton brings this neglected civil-rights pioneer and her accomplishments into the light. Paton’s ceaseless activity created the preconditions for the explosive emergence of the adoption reform movement in the 1970s. She founded the Life History Study Center and Orphan Voyage and was also instrumental in forming two of the movement’s most vital organizations, Concerned United Birthparents and the American Adoption Congress. Her unflagging efforts over five decades helped reverse social workers’ harmful policy and practice concerning adoption and sealed adoption records and change lawmakers’ enactment of laws prejudicial to adult adoptees and birth mothers, struggles that continue to this day.

Read more about Jean Paton at http://jeanpaton.com/
- See more at: http://www.press.umich.edu/6242018/jean_paton_and_the_struggle_to_reform_american_adoption#sthash.5SrUT9HD.dpuf

- See more at: http://www.press.umich.edu/6242018/jean_paton_and_the_struggle_to_reform_american_adoption#sthash.5SrUT9HD.dpuf




So you say you care about human & civil rights?

June 16, 2014

Who am I? U.S. adoptees finally winning birth certificate rights

Source: Reuters

Who am I? U.S. adoptees finally winning birth certificate rights
By Richard Weizel

MILFORD Conn. Mon Jun 16, 2014 9:52am EDT

~snip~

Some 42 of the 50 U.S. states still keep birth records tightly sealed under measures that started as early as the 1930s and ran as late as the mid-70s. They stemmed from what opponents say was a well-intentioned "but failed social experiment" to protect unmarried women from ridicule for sexual activity, and adoptees from the shame of being born out of wedlock.

Without birth certificates, both adoptees and birth parents are forced to turn detective, or use private investigators, to piece together small bits of non-identifying information with the little data in adoption papers.

Such searches can take days or decades, and many adoptees never find their birth parents.

"Those who approved these laws didn't think about what would happen when adopted children became adults. (They also) lied to birth mothers that they would forget their offspring. These are archaic laws that do not fit our society's current social mores," said Connecticut State Rep. David Alexander, an adoptee who helped draft language for the new law.

Alexander believes Connecticut is among a number of states “on the cutting edge of a major social reform movement” that will result in access to birth records for every adult adoptee in the nation, regardless of when they were born.

~more @ link~
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/16/us-usa-adoption-birthcertificates-idUSKBN0ER1JV20140616

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/16/us-usa-adoption-birthcertificates-idUSKBN0ER1JV20140616

---

We are making progress, but it is painfully slow. Although I am in reunion with my family, I am still not entitled to my original birth certificate and records from the state of California.

Why are adoptees not entitled to the same rights as other citizens?

June 13, 2014

Prime Time: The Secret Baby Trail

Prime Time: The Secret Baby Trail

This programme uncovered the export of Irish children in Mother and Baby homes to adoptive parents in America. The programme talks to mothers whose children were taken from them, to the children who grew up in the US, and to nuns as well. First broadcast: 20/06/1996


http://www.rte.ie/player/us/show/10291719/


This is a 37 minute video first broadcast in Ireland June 20, 1996. Excellent show that will shed light on not only the homes for unwed mothers in Ireland, but to the entire Baby Scoop Era as well.

The Sister interviewed here may only reluctantly agree to "registers" for mothers and their children to find each other, but Ireland is now on the brink of opening the records completely. Woot!

June 12, 2014

It was my mother sent off to the nuns (domestic, US)

I don't know if my grandparents sent money, I expect they did. But what I do know is that my mother was forced to work as a nanny for an upper middle-class family to "pay for her keep", and she never saw a dime of that labor. I also know that my adoptive parents paid $550 for me (I have the receipt), above and beyond their legal fees.

What sticks in my craw the most is the shaming that was done to my mother, the torture of having to care for another's child to "show her" what a "good" family was and what "she could never provide for me".

I don't understand your point of view. I do know that people who share mine have been shamed for decades into silence and we are now standing up to those who wish us to remain silent.

I have no patience with people who make excuses for the abuse hurled upon these women and the sorrow carried both by mother and child for the rest of our lives.

June 9, 2014

I saved a woman's life without a weapon~and the same night a cop saved mine also without brandishing

Its a long story, but my neighbor was about to shoot his wife in the face. When I walked in she was sitting in the corner sobbing for her life with her hands in front of her face hoping to shield herself from the rifle. He was bearing down on her and it was, to say the least, a volatile situation. I tried talking him down, but he was ramped up. Women who have faced an abuser knows that crazed look in their eye.

Long story short, I kept him from shooting her until the police arrived. When they got there an officer got me out. As I left the house, I began to leave the porch in the normal manner which would have had me walk in-front of the window of the room where my armed to the teeth neighbor was. Just as I began to walk in front of the window, another cop grabbed my arm and whispered, "this way", indicating to jump the rail in the other direction. Just as I did as he instructed, my neighbor shot through the window where he expected me to be~almost hitting a state trooper.

After another half an hour or so of a stand-off, the local sheriff got neighbor to surrender himself without any injuries.


Just thought that I would share this. Saving someone's life more often then not requires a clear mind, not necessarily a weapon.