The More Things Change......

I practically write a blog essay every morning on my Facebook timeline. I thought I should go back to blogging in order to keep my friends from going glassy-eyed trying to read my morning dose of TMI.

I intend to get personal with this blog. After all, I am the one doing the writing and I have a lot invested in life...about 69 and a half years. I am content, personally, but furious about a lot of things and disturbed by others. Nothing is perfect.

My first blog, then, is going to be about how I got deeply into and then out to the fringes of a personal issue. That was the battle of the unmarried mothers of the 50's, 60's and 70's who had their children taken for adoption and the way both the mothers and their children, now adults, were affected. Groups formed, broke apart, re-formed and the whole issue has been a love/hate cluster-fuck at times. There is a lot of anger, insecurity and frustration in this huge group of American Philomenas and the adult adopted population. Too often, the anger has been directed by one group towards the other. Mothers have fought mothers and adoptees have fought mothers and it gets tiresome after a while.

Mothers have been blamed for the sealing of records and the refusal of the holders of the keys to release OBC's  (original birth certificates) to the adopted person. The amended birth certificates are called, by the denizens of the adoption reform movement, "legalized lies." I agree. Our adult children should have complete access to those records and their OBC's. I also strongly feel that mothers should be granted access to all records concerning their child's birth, the OBC (which we generated), their care prior to adoption and their adoption records. Quid Pro Quo and that is where the trouble starts.

It is very difficult to explain to the adult adoptee who grew up in a totally different social environment from that which their mothers came. Many are still adamant about the idea that we had a choice in the matter. I am so sick of hearing about how the person hurt the worst in adoption separation was the adoptee because they didn't have a choice. Guess what, boys and girls. NO INFANT, adopted or not, has a choice about anything. And whether you want to believe it or not, the majority of us didn't have a choice, either. To my adult daughter, I can only say, believe what you will. You don't know me and I am tired of you insisting that I prove myself to you.

In fact, I am totally tired of the whole shooting match. We go into reunion expecting such unreal things and we come out of it (yes, my reunion with my daughter is shot and that with my son is uneasy) disabused of our expectations to the point that we have to force ourselves to adjust to the reality. That's why I stand on the fringe. There is nothing much for me there in the middle of the fray. I can support what I think is right, but I am ready to have my life back. It was taken from me in 1962. I think I have been punished enough. I deserve some peace and happiness and I am tired of having someone else base their self-image on who and what I am. I am unacceptable to my daughter for who I am and what I am (a godless atheist liberal). I have cried my last tears over it and have released her to her life and welcome to it.

So there is my semi-exit from the soap opera that is adoption loss and reunion. Like Sean Connery, I should never say never, but I am not making that issue a priority any more. I can't. I have a husband who just went into remission after battling follicular Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. I have health issues. I have loved ones with health issues. I have two raised children who love and need me. I have a home and a life and family and friends and I refuse to put any of that on hold for the sake of an old wound. I refuse to accept the idea that I will live my life in grief. I refuse to accept that I have a wound that will never heal. Funny, but I feel plenty healed, myself. Her resentment will have to remain just that...Hers.

As for my son, it is hard to get close to a scary man who personifies everything I politically and socially oppose. He's a violent bigot and I am afraid of him. The last time I heard the "n" word come out of his mouth was the last time I ever want to hear him say it..and he said it with such venom.

So, I am two for two. My adult children are not very likable. I will always love them but from a distance, only. I did get a real gift from my reunion with my daughter, though. I have a beautiful granddaughter with whom I have a loving relationship. I am forging a friendship with my grandson and I am the great-grandmother of four terrific kids. If that's a consolation prize, I'll take it with a big smile on my face.

The most important reason, though, for getting out of the Baby Scoop Era pool and grabbing my towel is the fact that we have bigger and more important fish to fry. If we don't make some changes in our government and in our national lifestyles, if we don't maintain the separation of church and state, if we don't challenge the threat we are facing from the plutocratic wealthy, the arrogant, the theocratic fanatics and the climate change deniers, then we don't stand a chance in hell of having the kind of governmental representation that will open adoption records. And that's a fact.

Those things are now my priorities. Each of us can do just a little, but together, we can do a lot. And, for pete's sake, put first things first. The past? Let It Go (love that song)!