This was asked by anonymous here on my blog as a comment under A Very Good Question:
--Quote--
I'm an adoptive parent to a one year old. I've been reading a lot of first mom blogs to educate myself on how to interact with my son's first mom. I came across your blog. What are your suggestions in developing a good relationship with her? I want to do this for my son. I don't ever want her to feel like a "breeder". She is far from that in our eyes.
--End Quote--
This is a challenging question. I'm no expert. But then again, to be totally honest, I don't think there are any experts on this. I know I just offended a ton of psych professionals with that statement, but that's the truth of the matter.
So I'm going to do the best that I can here, and hope that, in a year or so, I don't look back at my post and want to scream at myself for my ignorance and the stupidity of what I have said.
The first step in this delicate relationship is to recognize, and I mean REALLY recognize, the depth of this loss. Realize the pain that she will experience every time that she hears you called mommy. Realize the pain that she will experience every time that she has a visit and then has to leave.
And whatever you do, don't take responsibility for that pain as if you can de-create it. The pain is there, and it's going to be there, and you can't fix it. You can't fix it. You can recognize it and you can do your best to help her minimize it, but you can never fix it unless you give her child back. I'm not suggesting you do so, I'm just saying that this is all that can end the pain completely. That's something that you have to accept. Her pain may be uncomfortable for you, but the best you can hope for is to get her to pretend life is perfect around you out of fear of losing contact.
Or you can be compassionate and simply accept that the pain is there, and always will be. I stress this because so often we want to fix each other's pain, and/or we find each other's pain to be painful for us. The last person who can fix our pain is the person who has replaced us. I do not say that to be unkind, simply so that you understand that even trying to fix our pain would be an intrusion on your part, if you take anything resembling a direct approach. It would also feel like condescension. Please don't patronize by directly addressing it.
What you can do to help minimize it is try to make sure that she gets time with your child that doesn't seem supervised. Read a book and ignore them (to the best that any mother ever can). Let them talk privately. Let them laugh and play together. Don't intervene unless your child chooses that, or something is obviously amiss (in a dangerous fashion).
Always keep in mind that you have the ABSOLUTE position of power. She is forever certain that if she makes one slip-up, you can slice her out of your family's life like a cancer, slamming the door in her face like a chastised dog. This power dynamic cannot be undone. It exists, and it is ever-present.
Treat her like family as much as you can. You share blood now, in a way. So act like it. Would you even consider kicking your family out of your life because they smoked? Well, even if you don't like her smoking (just an example) and don't approve, just let it go. Ask not to smoke around your child, and otherwise just let it go. ANY "suggestion" you make will be unwelcome, because of the power differential between you. When someone who can remove your child from you forever and not let you see him again "recommends" that you quit smoking, it creates a panicky kind of terror in you. Will this be the last time you ever see your child if you don't comply?
No matter what you say, these "recommendations" are going to carry an inherent threat in them. So just don't make "recommendations" about her life unsolicited. And if she asks, remind her often that it's just your opinion, but what you might do in her case is blah blah blah. Be careful that you don't take a motherly, but only a friendly attitude towards her. Remember that a mother has an elevation over her children, and you already have an elevation over her. So don't condescend with "motherliness."
Follow her lead as much as you can. Sometimes she's not going to be ABLE to see your child. Yes, that puts you in a difficult spot of having to explain complex and deep human pain and emotion to your child. I'll tell you what us firstmothers hear all the time. Suck it up, do what's best for your child- explain and help him understand. Because pushing his firstmother may end him up with no firstmother to ever meet or see again. Yes, we're that delicate and our pain is that deep. Suicide is entirely possible, maybe even likely. I tried several times, I just happened to fail (and believe you me, I still don't know how I manage to fail those attempts).
So if she can't talk, if she can't call, if she can't come see him, then figure out how to help him understand. Because it's going to be hard on everyone. You are the winner in all of this, so you have a burden to be the peacemaker and the compassionate interpreter. Some firstmothers withdraw. Some don't. Follow her lead. She and your child both need you to do that.
You will have a tendency to want to control the situation with your son in mind, and you may have a tendency to feel a lot of impatience with her. It's important that you keep ALWAYS in your mind that, particularly in an open adoption, this is a powerfully ongoing loss for her. Every time that she sees your child, she loses him again as she leaves.
It is a bittersweet agony. Be compassionate of that. Talk to her like she's a woman who loves your child just as much as you do, as unimaginable as that might be to you. Tell her what you would want to know. Did he just learn how to walk? Tell her! It's bittersweet. Part doesn't want to know, because you missed it. Part has to know.
Ask her. "Do you want me to tell you these things? Are they hurtful, or helpful?" Whatever she says, always take it at face value. And if she changes it, just go with it. Because sometimes you think you can handle something, but as time goes by, you can't.
Be her interpreter, but not her "shrink." This is another "position of power" and to be brutally honest about it, you don't need anymore power in her life. Your power over her is already at terrifying proportions. Refuse to accept any more power, in any form. Be ethical about it and recognize that no matter how tempted you might be, just don't do it.
Call her something that doesn't demean her. Even if she says, "I prefer birthmother," the simply tell her that you cannot bring yourself to call her that any more than you would call others the N-word, even if they said to. Even if someone is "okay with it" or "asks for it," would you call them any other title of disrespect once you knew the true roots of it? Then don't do it to her, either.
The most important things are simply to treat her with respect and dignity. Recognize and never forget that she's in a lot of pain. Listen compassionately, but keep your opinions to yourself. Don't agree with her, just acknowledge her feelings, IF she shares them.
Ask her directly how you can involve her more. She's family, after all. She's as much family as anyone else whose blood you share. Keeping that in mind, without forgetting the power differential, will be the most important things, I think.
what the bible really says about adoption:
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
For the Mothers among us
This one is for all of us Mothers. Today, there are no lines in the sand. There are no walls. No silent, unspoken separation. This is for us all:
It all began to make sense, the blank stares, the lack of response, the way one of the kids will walk into the room while I'm on the phone and ask to be taken to the store. Inside I'm thinking, "Can't you see I'm on the phone?"
Obviously not; no one can see if I'm on the phone, or cooking, or sweeping the floor, or even standing on my head in the corner, because no one can see me at all. I'm invisible. The invisible Mom.
Some days I am only a pair of hands, nothing more: Can you fix this? Can you tie this? Can you open this?
Some days I'm not a pair of hands; I'm not even a human being. I'm a clock to ask, "What time is it?"
I'm a satellite guide to answer, "What number is the Disney Channel?"
I'm a car to order, "Right around 5:30, please."
I was certain that these were the hands that once held books and the eyes that studied history and the mind that graduated summa cum laude - but now they had disappeared into the peanut butter, never to be seen again. She's going, she's going, she's gone!
One night, a group of us were having dinner, celebrating the return of a friend from England. Janice had just gotten back from a fabulous trip, and she was going on and on about the hotel she stayed in. I was sitting there, looking around at the others all put together so well. It was hard not to compare and feel sorry for myself as I looked down at my out-of-style dress; it was the only thing I could find that was clean. My unwashed hair was pulled up in a hair clip and I was afraid I could actually smell peanut butter in it. I was feeling pretty pathetic, when Janice turned to me with a beautifully wrapped package, and said, "I brought you this." It was a book on the great cathedrals of Europe. I wasn't exactly sure why she'd given it to me until I read her inscription:
"To Charlotte , with admiration for the greatness of what you are building when no one sees."
In the days ahead I would read - no, devour - the book. And I would discover what would become for me, four life-changing truths, after which I could pattern my work: No one can say who built the great cathedrals - we have no record of their names. These builders gave their whole lives for a work they would never see finished. They made great sacrifices and expected no credit. The passion of their building was fueled by their faith that the eyes of God saw everything.
A legendary story in the book told of a rich man who came to visit the cathedral while it was being built, and he saw a workman carving a tiny bird on the inside of a beam. He was puzzled and asked the man, "Why are you spending so much time carving that bird into a beam that will be covered by the roof? No one will ever see it." And the workman replied, "Because God sees."
I closed the book, feeling the missing piece fall into place. It was almost as if I heard God whispering to me, "I see you, Charlotte. I see the sacrifices you make every day, even when no one around you does.
"No act of kindness you've done, no sequin you've sewn on, no cupcake you've baked, is too small for me to notice and smile over. You are building a great cathedral, but you can't see right now what it will become."
At times, my invisibility feels like an affliction. But it is not a disease that is erasing my life. It is the cure for the disease of my own self-centeredness. It is the antidote to my strong, stubborn pride. I keep the right perspective when I see myself as a great builder. As one of the people who show up at a job that they will never see finished, to work on something that their name will never be on.
The writer of the book went so far as to say that no cathedrals could ever be built in our lifetime because there are so few people willing to sacrifice to that degree.
When I really think about it, I don't want my daughter to tell the friend she's bringing home from college for Thanksgiving, "My mom gets up at 4 in the morning and bakes homemade pies, and then she hand bastes a turkey for three hours and presses all the linens for the table." That would mean I'd built a shrine or a monument to myself. I just want her to want to come home. And then, if there is anything more to say to her friend, to add, "You're gonna love it there."
As mothers, we are building great cathedrals. We cannot be seen if we're doing it right. And one day, it is very possible that the world will marvel, not only at what we have built, but at the beauty that has been added to the world by the sacrifices of invisible women.
Great Job, MOM!
Share this with all the Invisible Moms you know ..... I just did.
May we all find our path out of the darkness. May we all be blessed, no matter who we are, where we are, or what brought us here.
Thanks to Pip from adoptionthreads for posting that for me to share here.
--Quote--
Invisible Moms
It all began to make sense, the blank stares, the lack of response, the way one of the kids will walk into the room while I'm on the phone and ask to be taken to the store. Inside I'm thinking, "Can't you see I'm on the phone?"
Obviously not; no one can see if I'm on the phone, or cooking, or sweeping the floor, or even standing on my head in the corner, because no one can see me at all. I'm invisible. The invisible Mom.
Some days I am only a pair of hands, nothing more: Can you fix this? Can you tie this? Can you open this?
Some days I'm not a pair of hands; I'm not even a human being. I'm a clock to ask, "What time is it?"
I'm a satellite guide to answer, "What number is the Disney Channel?"
I'm a car to order, "Right around 5:30, please."
I was certain that these were the hands that once held books and the eyes that studied history and the mind that graduated summa cum laude - but now they had disappeared into the peanut butter, never to be seen again. She's going, she's going, she's gone!
One night, a group of us were having dinner, celebrating the return of a friend from England. Janice had just gotten back from a fabulous trip, and she was going on and on about the hotel she stayed in. I was sitting there, looking around at the others all put together so well. It was hard not to compare and feel sorry for myself as I looked down at my out-of-style dress; it was the only thing I could find that was clean. My unwashed hair was pulled up in a hair clip and I was afraid I could actually smell peanut butter in it. I was feeling pretty pathetic, when Janice turned to me with a beautifully wrapped package, and said, "I brought you this." It was a book on the great cathedrals of Europe. I wasn't exactly sure why she'd given it to me until I read her inscription:
"To Charlotte , with admiration for the greatness of what you are building when no one sees."
In the days ahead I would read - no, devour - the book. And I would discover what would become for me, four life-changing truths, after which I could pattern my work: No one can say who built the great cathedrals - we have no record of their names. These builders gave their whole lives for a work they would never see finished. They made great sacrifices and expected no credit. The passion of their building was fueled by their faith that the eyes of God saw everything.
A legendary story in the book told of a rich man who came to visit the cathedral while it was being built, and he saw a workman carving a tiny bird on the inside of a beam. He was puzzled and asked the man, "Why are you spending so much time carving that bird into a beam that will be covered by the roof? No one will ever see it." And the workman replied, "Because God sees."
I closed the book, feeling the missing piece fall into place. It was almost as if I heard God whispering to me, "I see you, Charlotte. I see the sacrifices you make every day, even when no one around you does.
"No act of kindness you've done, no sequin you've sewn on, no cupcake you've baked, is too small for me to notice and smile over. You are building a great cathedral, but you can't see right now what it will become."
At times, my invisibility feels like an affliction. But it is not a disease that is erasing my life. It is the cure for the disease of my own self-centeredness. It is the antidote to my strong, stubborn pride. I keep the right perspective when I see myself as a great builder. As one of the people who show up at a job that they will never see finished, to work on something that their name will never be on.
The writer of the book went so far as to say that no cathedrals could ever be built in our lifetime because there are so few people willing to sacrifice to that degree.
When I really think about it, I don't want my daughter to tell the friend she's bringing home from college for Thanksgiving, "My mom gets up at 4 in the morning and bakes homemade pies, and then she hand bastes a turkey for three hours and presses all the linens for the table." That would mean I'd built a shrine or a monument to myself. I just want her to want to come home. And then, if there is anything more to say to her friend, to add, "You're gonna love it there."
As mothers, we are building great cathedrals. We cannot be seen if we're doing it right. And one day, it is very possible that the world will marvel, not only at what we have built, but at the beauty that has been added to the world by the sacrifices of invisible women.
Great Job, MOM!
Share this with all the Invisible Moms you know ..... I just did.
--End Quote--
May we all find our path out of the darkness. May we all be blessed, no matter who we are, where we are, or what brought us here.
Thanks to Pip from adoptionthreads for posting that for me to share here.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
How dehumanization works
First, let's look at a much more obvious and powerful example of dehumanization:
The originator of this idea was Julius Streicher, the editor of a weekly newspaper, Das Sturmer, “The Storm Troope,” that spread anti-Semitic propaganda to the general public in Germany. The “facts” presented in his newspaper (for adults, parents, and soon-to-be recruited Nazi SS perpetrators of destruction) were carried over into these school books. Streicher sought to create a perception of Jews as a sub-human race that was a threat to the national state of Germany. The idea was for this total indoctrination of these beliefs in the minds of the young and the old to such an extent that they came to have a conviction about the inferiority of Jews and the need to eliminate the threat they posed to the purity and superiority of the Aryan race.
The use of stereotyped conceptions of Jews as lecherous old men seducing young Aryan women, of dirty Jewish butchers, unscrupulous Jewish lawyers, hard-hearted Jewish landlords, rich Jewish business men and their wives ignoring the poverty around them, all combined to create a hate-filled image of Jews. In one of these comic books, after providing such “evidence” of the despicable nature of Jews, three conclusions are provided: kicking their children out of German schools, prohibiting them from using public facilities, like parks, and then expelling them from the country. Those “reasonable” consequences that Nazis should create for Jews foreshadows the more sinister ones of putting them all in ghettoes, then transporting them to concentration camps, and finally enacting the “final solution” of attempting mass genocide of the entire Jewish population.
So, really, what are the caricatures of "birth"mothers? Well, first off, they are women who can easily give away their child and then just "go on with their life."
That's pretty ugly. Think about it. But that's not what we're told when we're considering relinquishment. When we're considering it, we're heroic and we're making the heroic choice- and really, shouldn't we perpetuate this belief? That way, those who HAVE relinquished can be proud, and those considering relinquishing can be brought to that place that much easier... who DOESN'T want to be the hero??
Crack whores. Women who have lost their children to CPS. Single whores who spread her legs sans commitment (because 60% of people nowdays think marriage is a REALLY lasting one).
It goes on and on. The belief that those who claim they felt pressured and as if they had all choice removed from them are "just playing victims" because there's "NO WAY IN HELL THAT I WOULD GIVE UP MY BABY SO IF YOU DID YOU ARE JUST A BAD PERSON!!!ONE11!"
Coercion doesn't exist, I'm told over and over again. And if it does exist, it's maybe one or two people every millenium or so. Maybe even per eon, I'm not really sure. Of course, those two people are all in some other country, too, because OUR country regulates adoption and would NEVER vilify OUR breeder-bitches! Dumb stupid cunts, anyway. Clearly, they must be, because what kind of monster can give away her baby like so much trash?
If you're considering adoption, you're being told what a great person you are. Some adopter is looking you in the eye and smiling and so is the social worker. Behind the smile are the lingering questions, "What kind of monster ARE you that you could give away your baby?"
Your parents, while they look you in the face right now and tell you that they'll cut you off forever if you have that baby, that you'll never be welcome home... tomorrow they'll blame you- it was YOUR decision, not theirs! THEY didn't sign those papers, you did!! And YOU GAVE AWAY THEIR GRANDCHILD! All of the threats they leveled at you, they will conveniently forget. They will blame you for "their" loss, and refuse to ever acknowledge yours. They will be livid that you DARE to blame THEM for the loss of THEIR grandchild.
And if reunion comes, they will demand to be "grandma and grandpa" and completely be unwilling and unable to accept the fact that they are NOT grandma and grandpa to that child because they haven't been there. And they haven't been there because they threatened their OWN child. They threatened to abandon their own child in order to force her to abandon HER child, and they want everyone later on to forget that ever happened and embrace their newfound desire to be grandparents with open arms.
Your own family, if you go through this, will ignore your emotion agony. The adopters are (at best) unlikely to care. And more likely, they will instill in your child the "truth" about "breeders" and "what kind of person" can "give her child away," and will remind the child to say "Thank you" to the mother for NOT raising her own child. Because I mean, THINK OF THE HORRIFIC LIFE YOUR CHILD WOULD HAVE WITH YOU!!
That is the "truth" of "birthmothers." They are horrific people who gave their children away. They are horrific people who would have destroyed their child's life (give the child a better life, your child deserves better THAN YOU).
Because you know, at age 1 month, that baby is REALLY going to miss that pool and that pony that the adopters of course can afford to provide....
--Quote--
The originator of this idea was Julius Streicher, the editor of a weekly newspaper, Das Sturmer, “The Storm Troope,” that spread anti-Semitic propaganda to the general public in Germany. The “facts” presented in his newspaper (for adults, parents, and soon-to-be recruited Nazi SS perpetrators of destruction) were carried over into these school books. Streicher sought to create a perception of Jews as a sub-human race that was a threat to the national state of Germany. The idea was for this total indoctrination of these beliefs in the minds of the young and the old to such an extent that they came to have a conviction about the inferiority of Jews and the need to eliminate the threat they posed to the purity and superiority of the Aryan race.
The use of stereotyped conceptions of Jews as lecherous old men seducing young Aryan women, of dirty Jewish butchers, unscrupulous Jewish lawyers, hard-hearted Jewish landlords, rich Jewish business men and their wives ignoring the poverty around them, all combined to create a hate-filled image of Jews. In one of these comic books, after providing such “evidence” of the despicable nature of Jews, three conclusions are provided: kicking their children out of German schools, prohibiting them from using public facilities, like parks, and then expelling them from the country. Those “reasonable” consequences that Nazis should create for Jews foreshadows the more sinister ones of putting them all in ghettoes, then transporting them to concentration camps, and finally enacting the “final solution” of attempting mass genocide of the entire Jewish population.
--End Quote--
From here. (Really, that would be a fantastic thing to read, regardless, I'm not going to quote it all- I don't think...)
So, really, what are the caricatures of "birth"mothers? Well, first off, they are women who can easily give away their child and then just "go on with their life."
That's pretty ugly. Think about it. But that's not what we're told when we're considering relinquishment. When we're considering it, we're heroic and we're making the heroic choice- and really, shouldn't we perpetuate this belief? That way, those who HAVE relinquished can be proud, and those considering relinquishing can be brought to that place that much easier... who DOESN'T want to be the hero??
Crack whores. Women who have lost their children to CPS. Single whores who spread her legs sans commitment (because 60% of people nowdays think marriage is a REALLY lasting one).
It goes on and on. The belief that those who claim they felt pressured and as if they had all choice removed from them are "just playing victims" because there's "NO WAY IN HELL THAT I WOULD GIVE UP MY BABY SO IF YOU DID YOU ARE JUST A BAD PERSON!!!ONE11!"
Coercion doesn't exist, I'm told over and over again. And if it does exist, it's maybe one or two people every millenium or so. Maybe even per eon, I'm not really sure. Of course, those two people are all in some other country, too, because OUR country regulates adoption and would NEVER vilify OUR breeder-bitches! Dumb stupid cunts, anyway. Clearly, they must be, because what kind of monster can give away her baby like so much trash?
If you're considering adoption, you're being told what a great person you are. Some adopter is looking you in the eye and smiling and so is the social worker. Behind the smile are the lingering questions, "What kind of monster ARE you that you could give away your baby?"
Your parents, while they look you in the face right now and tell you that they'll cut you off forever if you have that baby, that you'll never be welcome home... tomorrow they'll blame you- it was YOUR decision, not theirs! THEY didn't sign those papers, you did!! And YOU GAVE AWAY THEIR GRANDCHILD! All of the threats they leveled at you, they will conveniently forget. They will blame you for "their" loss, and refuse to ever acknowledge yours. They will be livid that you DARE to blame THEM for the loss of THEIR grandchild.
And if reunion comes, they will demand to be "grandma and grandpa" and completely be unwilling and unable to accept the fact that they are NOT grandma and grandpa to that child because they haven't been there. And they haven't been there because they threatened their OWN child. They threatened to abandon their own child in order to force her to abandon HER child, and they want everyone later on to forget that ever happened and embrace their newfound desire to be grandparents with open arms.
Your own family, if you go through this, will ignore your emotion agony. The adopters are (at best) unlikely to care. And more likely, they will instill in your child the "truth" about "breeders" and "what kind of person" can "give her child away," and will remind the child to say "Thank you" to the mother for NOT raising her own child. Because I mean, THINK OF THE HORRIFIC LIFE YOUR CHILD WOULD HAVE WITH YOU!!
That is the "truth" of "birthmothers." They are horrific people who gave their children away. They are horrific people who would have destroyed their child's life (give the child a better life, your child deserves better THAN YOU).
Because you know, at age 1 month, that baby is REALLY going to miss that pool and that pony that the adopters of course can afford to provide....
A very good question!
http://adoptee.adoptionblogs.com/weblogs/can-adoption-reform-happen-with-everyone
Can Adoption Reform Happen With Everyone on Different Sides?
It's a great question. Sadly, it was asked by someone who obviously doesn't get it.
In particular, this part made me laugh (with sad tears in my eyes):
Sometimes when I read or hear people talk about adoption it is more about them personally instead of the adoptee. The whole foundation of adoption is about the adoptee having a better life or something that the birth parents feel they were unable to offer the adoptee.
*Sigh* No, friend. The foundation of adoption is providing children for couples who want them, FOR A FEE. The foundation of adtoption is capitalism. Sorry to be the one to break this to you. If adoption were about "the adoptee" (which all adoptees think it is, interestingly enough- "it's supposed to be about the adoptee, it's about the adoptee, etc.), then a huge number of adoptions WOULD NOT HAPPEN. Because what is best for a child is to help get their family on their feet and keep families intact.
The foundation of adoption is the basic belief that human beings are interchangeable and replaceable. Got a poor mother? Replace her! Can't have a child or have you lost one? Replace that empty space!
The actual cases of "best for the adoptee" adoptions in this country are adoptions from foster care. And that is a horrifically distorted and terribly corrupt system, too, so even there, there's far from any guarantees.
But the majority of adoptions in the USA are domestic infant adoptions, not foster adoptions. An overwhelming majority, in fact.
So anyway, then, in her ignorance, she carries blithly onwards:
When I see someone refer to adoptive parents as adopters grates on my nerves. It is completely disrespectful to adoptive parents. We do not refer to birth mothers as birthers, birth fathers as sperm donors, adoptees as unwanted, etc but it is okay to refer to adoptive parents as adopters.
Actually, sweety, you just DID refer to "birthmothers" as "birther," in fact, worse than that. You called us "birthmothers," which doesn't even elevate us to the point of birther, we're just walking uteruses for other women. We aren't "birthmothers," and so long as you persist in tagging us with this, you really have nothing to say to me about calling adopters adopters.
Especially the adopters of my son, who are dispicable people, and deserve no title of "parent," they are people who paid someone to steal my baby. They don't get any title of any form of respect from me. And most adopters are happily ignorant and refuse to accept anything but that "adoption was your choice, you made the choice, live with it."
Adoptive parents are the people who have pulled their heads out of their ass and realized that adoptees and firstmothers have suffered terrible losses, and who accept the fact that things are not always the blissful event that is pictured by people like you, the media, and the industry that profits off of adoption.
So yeah, so long as you're still calling mothers of adoption loss "birthmothers," then you're no one who I am willing to listen to regarding "polite terminology." You denigrate us and then try to slap us for "denigrating" others. Clean up your own basement, honey, something died there.
And "birth fathers," you have got to be fucking kidding me. Seriously.
I'll be sure, if I ever see my son's first father again, to ask him how the birth of our son went, since apparently fathers of adoption loss can give birth, unlike other fathers.
--Quote--
We get so caught up in our place in the adoption circle. Needing to find new titles to cement our place, a sense of need to establish our importance seems to be the important issue.
Importance? Cement our place?
Lady, let me clue you in on something. The LAST thing I give two shits about is "cementing my place."
What I care about is cementing NEVER CREATING ANOTHER ME. I care about never having another adoptee meet his or her mother and finding out SHE DIDN'T WANT TO GIVE HER CHILD UP.
That's what I care about.
And the way to accomplish that is to accept that adoption right now SHOULD be about adoptees, but isn't. It's accepting that adoption is about capitalism and exploitation of adoptive parents' longing, young women's fears and insecurities, and infants which are nothing more than product to be moved, else the adoptive agencies and their employees become out of a job.
But the discussion is worthwhile. So let's ask ourselves that honestly, how CAN we get effective reform when both adoptees, and adopters, genuinely think that all first mothers actually had a choice in adoption?
We can't. And even those adoptees who want reform and claim to be enlightened, aware, and to "get it," sit there and say that "the adoptee is the only one with no choice in adoption."
Adopters sit there, come to my blog, go to forums, and state that "them there breeders- erm, birthmothers (sorry, I forget that even when you tell them what the word means, they don't give a shit and still use it)" make a choice and later regret it.
As if coerced choices are actual choices. As if extorted choices are real choices. As if being lied to about your rights is making a real choice.
As if.
So no, adoption reform isn't going to happen. Because it all boils down to "adoption is the birthmother's choice, and we shouldn't take that choice away from her."
Adoption, even to those on the inside, is about mothers "giving their children better lives." Making this "choice."
And ignorance, exploitation, extortion, coercion, lies told to them, predators targeting and hammering on them with lies and warped religious beliefs... well, those are no excuse. So long as adoption is seen by everyone as the "mother's choice," no reform will ever happen.
Adoptees and adopters are all on the same side- against birthmothers.
And we, we just want what is best for our children. The very thing that in the beginning was exploited to turn us into "birthmothers" to begin with. And if we also want what is best for us, then we are considered selfish, horrible people, at both ends of adoption. If we want what's best for us AND our child before adoption, we are selfish because we are stealing from the adopters. If we want what's best for ourselves AND our now adult children after adoption, we are stealing from THEM by not apologizing and grovelling because we were extorted, coerced, lied to, or even outright had our child kidnapped from us.
No matter what we do, which way we turn, we are the bad guys. The only time we're not the bad guys is during pregnancy, when someone is preying upon us in our most vulnerable hour.
We have no advocates anywhere. Anywhere.
"You made your choice, live with it. Get over it. Move on with your life."
Except most of us never made a choice. We were railroaded and stripped of all support and dignity. We were threatened by our parents that they would leave us; we were threatened by social workers or adoption advocates that our children would end up in prisons (raped by other prisoners) because we are single, poor, and/or young; we were threatened by society that we would never crawl out of our hole of poverty if we had a child; we were left swinging from the line with a rope around our throat, and then told that 'it was YOUR decision!'
Yet again, we must then stand at the altar of self-sacrifice later on and apologize as if that means we had a real choice in what happened to us.
So you're right. Adoption reform can't happen while we're all on different sides. Adoption reform can never happen so long as there's no reason to reform it. And so long as it's considered a valid choice even if it's a coerced, extorted, or otherwise a choice based on lies, manipulation, deciet, or the many other dishonest practices currently considered posh in adoption.... we never will have real reason to reform it.
Can Adoption Reform Happen With Everyone on Different Sides?
It's a great question. Sadly, it was asked by someone who obviously doesn't get it.
In particular, this part made me laugh (with sad tears in my eyes):
--Quote--
Sometimes when I read or hear people talk about adoption it is more about them personally instead of the adoptee. The whole foundation of adoption is about the adoptee having a better life or something that the birth parents feel they were unable to offer the adoptee.
--End Quote--
*Sigh* No, friend. The foundation of adoption is providing children for couples who want them, FOR A FEE. The foundation of adtoption is capitalism. Sorry to be the one to break this to you. If adoption were about "the adoptee" (which all adoptees think it is, interestingly enough- "it's supposed to be about the adoptee, it's about the adoptee, etc.), then a huge number of adoptions WOULD NOT HAPPEN. Because what is best for a child is to help get their family on their feet and keep families intact.
The foundation of adoption is the basic belief that human beings are interchangeable and replaceable. Got a poor mother? Replace her! Can't have a child or have you lost one? Replace that empty space!
The actual cases of "best for the adoptee" adoptions in this country are adoptions from foster care. And that is a horrifically distorted and terribly corrupt system, too, so even there, there's far from any guarantees.
But the majority of adoptions in the USA are domestic infant adoptions, not foster adoptions. An overwhelming majority, in fact.
So anyway, then, in her ignorance, she carries blithly onwards:
--Quote--
When I see someone refer to adoptive parents as adopters grates on my nerves. It is completely disrespectful to adoptive parents. We do not refer to birth mothers as birthers, birth fathers as sperm donors, adoptees as unwanted, etc but it is okay to refer to adoptive parents as adopters.
--End Quote--
Actually, sweety, you just DID refer to "birthmothers" as "birther," in fact, worse than that. You called us "birthmothers," which doesn't even elevate us to the point of birther, we're just walking uteruses for other women. We aren't "birthmothers," and so long as you persist in tagging us with this, you really have nothing to say to me about calling adopters adopters.
Especially the adopters of my son, who are dispicable people, and deserve no title of "parent," they are people who paid someone to steal my baby. They don't get any title of any form of respect from me. And most adopters are happily ignorant and refuse to accept anything but that "adoption was your choice, you made the choice, live with it."
Adoptive parents are the people who have pulled their heads out of their ass and realized that adoptees and firstmothers have suffered terrible losses, and who accept the fact that things are not always the blissful event that is pictured by people like you, the media, and the industry that profits off of adoption.
So yeah, so long as you're still calling mothers of adoption loss "birthmothers," then you're no one who I am willing to listen to regarding "polite terminology." You denigrate us and then try to slap us for "denigrating" others. Clean up your own basement, honey, something died there.
And "birth fathers," you have got to be fucking kidding me. Seriously.
I'll be sure, if I ever see my son's first father again, to ask him how the birth of our son went, since apparently fathers of adoption loss can give birth, unlike other fathers.
--Quote--
We get so caught up in our place in the adoption circle. Needing to find new titles to cement our place, a sense of need to establish our importance seems to be the important issue.
--End Quote--
Importance? Cement our place?
Lady, let me clue you in on something. The LAST thing I give two shits about is "cementing my place."
What I care about is cementing NEVER CREATING ANOTHER ME. I care about never having another adoptee meet his or her mother and finding out SHE DIDN'T WANT TO GIVE HER CHILD UP.
That's what I care about.
And the way to accomplish that is to accept that adoption right now SHOULD be about adoptees, but isn't. It's accepting that adoption is about capitalism and exploitation of adoptive parents' longing, young women's fears and insecurities, and infants which are nothing more than product to be moved, else the adoptive agencies and their employees become out of a job.
But the discussion is worthwhile. So let's ask ourselves that honestly, how CAN we get effective reform when both adoptees, and adopters, genuinely think that all first mothers actually had a choice in adoption?
We can't. And even those adoptees who want reform and claim to be enlightened, aware, and to "get it," sit there and say that "the adoptee is the only one with no choice in adoption."
Adopters sit there, come to my blog, go to forums, and state that "them there breeders- erm, birthmothers (sorry, I forget that even when you tell them what the word means, they don't give a shit and still use it)" make a choice and later regret it.
As if coerced choices are actual choices. As if extorted choices are real choices. As if being lied to about your rights is making a real choice.
As if.
So no, adoption reform isn't going to happen. Because it all boils down to "adoption is the birthmother's choice, and we shouldn't take that choice away from her."
Adoption, even to those on the inside, is about mothers "giving their children better lives." Making this "choice."
And ignorance, exploitation, extortion, coercion, lies told to them, predators targeting and hammering on them with lies and warped religious beliefs... well, those are no excuse. So long as adoption is seen by everyone as the "mother's choice," no reform will ever happen.
Adoptees and adopters are all on the same side- against birthmothers.
And we, we just want what is best for our children. The very thing that in the beginning was exploited to turn us into "birthmothers" to begin with. And if we also want what is best for us, then we are considered selfish, horrible people, at both ends of adoption. If we want what's best for us AND our child before adoption, we are selfish because we are stealing from the adopters. If we want what's best for ourselves AND our now adult children after adoption, we are stealing from THEM by not apologizing and grovelling because we were extorted, coerced, lied to, or even outright had our child kidnapped from us.
No matter what we do, which way we turn, we are the bad guys. The only time we're not the bad guys is during pregnancy, when someone is preying upon us in our most vulnerable hour.
We have no advocates anywhere. Anywhere.
"You made your choice, live with it. Get over it. Move on with your life."
Except most of us never made a choice. We were railroaded and stripped of all support and dignity. We were threatened by our parents that they would leave us; we were threatened by social workers or adoption advocates that our children would end up in prisons (raped by other prisoners) because we are single, poor, and/or young; we were threatened by society that we would never crawl out of our hole of poverty if we had a child; we were left swinging from the line with a rope around our throat, and then told that 'it was YOUR decision!'
Yet again, we must then stand at the altar of self-sacrifice later on and apologize as if that means we had a real choice in what happened to us.
So you're right. Adoption reform can't happen while we're all on different sides. Adoption reform can never happen so long as there's no reason to reform it. And so long as it's considered a valid choice even if it's a coerced, extorted, or otherwise a choice based on lies, manipulation, deciet, or the many other dishonest practices currently considered posh in adoption.... we never will have real reason to reform it.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Supreme court says, "You Own It"
Supreme Court to Women of America: You Own It
Amanda Marcotte, RH Reality Check on January 15, 2008 - 8:56am
Published under: Access to Abortion Women’s Rights 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade Supreme Court
Next week is the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and instead of doing the same old thing and focusing on the right to abortion, I'd like to examine some of the political fallout that occurred after this momentous event that signaled to the women of America that we own our bodies. We do. Not your husband, not your boyfriend, not your parents, not your church. In deciding Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court did more than simply legalize abortion. It sent the signal to women of the country that we do in fact have the right to control our own bodies and sexuality.
It's well understood that one of the primary motivations of the anti-abortion movement is generating a steady supply of white babies into the adoption market, a supply that has dried up since Roe was decided 35 years ago. Most people assume that the reason that the supply of white babies dried up was the prevalence of abortion after 1973. Certainly, anti-choice activists give every indication of believing this, pleading with women to consider adoption instead of abortion, setting up maternity homes and crisis pregnancy centers to pressure women into giving up babies for adoption and even going so far as to require that anyone applying for "don't get an abortion" funds gives the baby up for adoption. The intense interest in adoption makes the anti-choice movement ten times creepier of course, because they can't even hide that they see women less as human beings and more as baby factories producing for "worthier" couples. Take into consideration how anti-choice organizations also oppose all forms of pregnancy prevention, including contraception and sex education, and you have a pretty damning stack of evidence that all this sturm und drang about abortion is about making sure that every infertile white couple who wants a baby that looks like them gets one.
But the statistics indicate that it's not so much abortion that's changed the game as single motherhood. Before 1973, 19% of unmarried white women who had babies gave them up for adoption. Between 1973 and 1981, the rate plummeted to 8%. By 1988, it was 3%. Nowadays, less than 1% of teenage mothers of all races give up the baby for adoption. The statistics speak a truth rarely mentioned: ‘Twasn't the legalization of abortion that made it impossible to adopt a healthy white baby. After all, we already know that women had plenty of abortions when it was illegal. It was the legitimization of single motherhood for middle class white women that made the difference.
So why do the adoption-obsessed anti-choicers hate Roe so damn much? Well, they're not entirely incorrect in thinking that Roe dried up the adoption market, even if they're wrong to think that abortion did. 1973 does seem to be the breaking point, the end of the stream of white, middle class girls giving up babies for adoption. It seems women across the nation realized that if they had a right to abort a pregnancy, they also had a right to keep a baby, and didn't have to give it up just because their parents, church, and community said so. People treat "choice" like a code word for "abortion", but it really does mean "choice"--the choice to have an abortion, sure, but also the choice to be a single mother, to be childless, to delay marriage, never to marry at all, or to be a lesbian.
SCOTUS said to the women of America, "Your body belongs to you," and the nation listened. After 1973, anti-rape and anti-domestic violence activism erupted. Wife-beating stopped being a dirty little secret and became a major political issue. A woman who owns her own body not only has the right to terminate pregnancies and use birth control, she gets to say when she has sex and when she does not. The rape rate has plummeted since the 1970s; how much of that was due to the fact that people really started to believe in a woman's right to own herself?
Roe the court case was about abortion, but Roe the cultural landmark was about a multitude of women's rights. So when you hear politicians or activists talking about overturning Roe v. Wade, can you really believe that it's just about abortion? Or do they hate all of it--women's right to work, women's equality in marriage, women's right not to be raped, women's right to single motherhood, women's right to file for divorce?
I was born in 1977, years after what might be the most famous 20th century Supreme Court decision, at least next to Brown v. the Board of Education. My generation has a reputation, to say the least, of being a bit ungrateful, a tad full of ourselves, unaware of how hard our feminist foremothers struggled. Sometimes the third-wavers deserve the ugly stereotypes about being ignorant and arrogant, and sometimes we deserve the positive ones about being sexy and fun-loving. The one thread that runs through it all is that we grew up never really knowing what it's like not to live in a society where the fundamental concept "I own myself," isn't true for us.
Things are far from perfect for women of my generation and the one after it, of course, but at least we know this much that our foremothers had to fight to know, that our bodies are ours. It's such a conceptual shift that it's hard to know how that translates into everyday life. Do I feel a little more comfortable taking up the armrest in the movie theater than my mother did? Do I feel a little less obligated to wear socially mandated uncomfortable clothing? I know this one is true. Am I a little more surprised when a man gooses me in public? I think so. It's hard to put a measure on the individual, small details, but in accumulation, it's been a big change.
Amanda Marcotte, RH Reality Check on January 15, 2008 - 8:56am
Published under: Access to Abortion Women’s Rights 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade Supreme Court
Next week is the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and instead of doing the same old thing and focusing on the right to abortion, I'd like to examine some of the political fallout that occurred after this momentous event that signaled to the women of America that we own our bodies. We do. Not your husband, not your boyfriend, not your parents, not your church. In deciding Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court did more than simply legalize abortion. It sent the signal to women of the country that we do in fact have the right to control our own bodies and sexuality.
It's well understood that one of the primary motivations of the anti-abortion movement is generating a steady supply of white babies into the adoption market, a supply that has dried up since Roe was decided 35 years ago. Most people assume that the reason that the supply of white babies dried up was the prevalence of abortion after 1973. Certainly, anti-choice activists give every indication of believing this, pleading with women to consider adoption instead of abortion, setting up maternity homes and crisis pregnancy centers to pressure women into giving up babies for adoption and even going so far as to require that anyone applying for "don't get an abortion" funds gives the baby up for adoption. The intense interest in adoption makes the anti-choice movement ten times creepier of course, because they can't even hide that they see women less as human beings and more as baby factories producing for "worthier" couples. Take into consideration how anti-choice organizations also oppose all forms of pregnancy prevention, including contraception and sex education, and you have a pretty damning stack of evidence that all this sturm und drang about abortion is about making sure that every infertile white couple who wants a baby that looks like them gets one.
But the statistics indicate that it's not so much abortion that's changed the game as single motherhood. Before 1973, 19% of unmarried white women who had babies gave them up for adoption. Between 1973 and 1981, the rate plummeted to 8%. By 1988, it was 3%. Nowadays, less than 1% of teenage mothers of all races give up the baby for adoption. The statistics speak a truth rarely mentioned: ‘Twasn't the legalization of abortion that made it impossible to adopt a healthy white baby. After all, we already know that women had plenty of abortions when it was illegal. It was the legitimization of single motherhood for middle class white women that made the difference.
So why do the adoption-obsessed anti-choicers hate Roe so damn much? Well, they're not entirely incorrect in thinking that Roe dried up the adoption market, even if they're wrong to think that abortion did. 1973 does seem to be the breaking point, the end of the stream of white, middle class girls giving up babies for adoption. It seems women across the nation realized that if they had a right to abort a pregnancy, they also had a right to keep a baby, and didn't have to give it up just because their parents, church, and community said so. People treat "choice" like a code word for "abortion", but it really does mean "choice"--the choice to have an abortion, sure, but also the choice to be a single mother, to be childless, to delay marriage, never to marry at all, or to be a lesbian.
SCOTUS said to the women of America, "Your body belongs to you," and the nation listened. After 1973, anti-rape and anti-domestic violence activism erupted. Wife-beating stopped being a dirty little secret and became a major political issue. A woman who owns her own body not only has the right to terminate pregnancies and use birth control, she gets to say when she has sex and when she does not. The rape rate has plummeted since the 1970s; how much of that was due to the fact that people really started to believe in a woman's right to own herself?
Roe the court case was about abortion, but Roe the cultural landmark was about a multitude of women's rights. So when you hear politicians or activists talking about overturning Roe v. Wade, can you really believe that it's just about abortion? Or do they hate all of it--women's right to work, women's equality in marriage, women's right not to be raped, women's right to single motherhood, women's right to file for divorce?
I was born in 1977, years after what might be the most famous 20th century Supreme Court decision, at least next to Brown v. the Board of Education. My generation has a reputation, to say the least, of being a bit ungrateful, a tad full of ourselves, unaware of how hard our feminist foremothers struggled. Sometimes the third-wavers deserve the ugly stereotypes about being ignorant and arrogant, and sometimes we deserve the positive ones about being sexy and fun-loving. The one thread that runs through it all is that we grew up never really knowing what it's like not to live in a society where the fundamental concept "I own myself," isn't true for us.
Things are far from perfect for women of my generation and the one after it, of course, but at least we know this much that our foremothers had to fight to know, that our bodies are ours. It's such a conceptual shift that it's hard to know how that translates into everyday life. Do I feel a little more comfortable taking up the armrest in the movie theater than my mother did? Do I feel a little less obligated to wear socially mandated uncomfortable clothing? I know this one is true. Am I a little more surprised when a man gooses me in public? I think so. It's hard to put a measure on the individual, small details, but in accumulation, it's been a big change.
Friday, January 11, 2008
Adoption coercion doesn't exist, huh?
From here (My comments at the bottom)
JACKSONVILLE, North Carolina (CNN) -- Lance Cpl. Maria Lauterbach, the pregnant Marine who was missing from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, is dead, the Onslow County sheriff said Friday.
Lance Cpl. Maria Lauterbach last spoke to relatives in the Dayton, Ohio, area on December 14.
The suspect in the case is Cpl. Cesar Armando Lauren, 21, a fellow Marine whom Lauterbach had accused of sexual assault, Sheriff Ed Brown said at a news conference Friday.
Lauren is not in custody, Brown said, and a search is on for him. He said Lauren had left the Camp Lejeune area about 4 a.m. Friday, with nearly an eight-hour head start before the hunt for him began.
Authorities were looking for his black Dodge quad-cab pickup with North Carolina license plate TRR 1522, Brown said, adding that Lauren should turn himself in.
"We'll get him one way or the other, somewhere," he told CNN.
Brown said authorities had obtained physical evidence of Lauterbach's death that also linked Lauren to the case. He would not elaborate on that evidence.
Asked how Lauterbach died, Brown would only speak "of an injury to her."
He said investigators are looking for the woman's body in a residential wooded area in Onslow County and hoped to find it before dark Friday.
Brown said investigators learned of Lauterbach's death Friday morning when a former Marine contacted military authorities.
The sheriff had expected a positive outcome in the case earlier in the day.
"I just wanted to cry" when learning of her death, he said.
Paul Ciccarelli, a special agent with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, said Lauren had carried on a relationship with Lauterbach after her rape complaint against him.
Lauterbach was to give testimony in a military hearing on the rape charges scheduled for late December, Ciccarelli said.
Ciccarelli said Lauren had not been considered a flight risk.
Lauterbach, 20, last contacted her family in Ohio on December 14 and was reported missing by her mother on December 19.
Documents released by Onslow County authorities on Thursday had indicated Lauterbach may have gone off on her own willingly, perhaps after being upset by a phone call.
The woman's mother, Mary Lauterbach, described having a "firm conversation" with Maria Lauterbach about her unborn child, telling her she should give the baby up for adoption because she is unable to care for it. Watch police face unanswered questions »
"Ms. Maria Lauterbach was telling Mary Lauterbach everything was fine, but Mary Lauterbach had a sense that the statements were not accurate," the report said.
The Marine Corps had brought Lauterbach's roommate, Sgt. Daniel Robert Durham, back to North Carolina from a training deployment in California to answer questions, but Brown said Friday he was not a suspect in her death.
The Onslow County report said Durham told police that he had made his home available to Lauterbach "out of sympathy for her situation" and that the two had shared the home for a short period of time.
Durham said he noticed nothing unusual in Lauterbach's behavior before she disappeared, but he said, "She had been upset by a phone call from her stepmother."
A few items of Lauterbach's were missing, he said -- her car, some cosmetics and clothing -- that led him to believe she may have left willingly. However, Durham told police that Lauterbach was confined to bed most of the time because of her pregnancy and that she "was in no shape for extended outings," according to the reports.
Brown called Durham a close friend.
Brown said Lauterbach may have been due to give birth January 8. The police reports, however, said she was due on February 14 and did not show up for a prenatal medical appointment December 28.
Lauterbach's cell phone was found on a roadside near Camp Lejeune on December 20. Her car was found Monday in the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant, Brown said, and apparently had been there since December 15.
Investigators have said a withdrawal from Lauterbach's bank account was made on December 14 and there was "suspicious activity" on the account 10 days later. Police reports said Lauterbach's ATM card was used at a Marine Federal Credit Union by a man who attempted to cover the surveillance camera with a rag while he withdrew money from her account.
Lauterbach was a personnel clerk assigned to Combat Logistics Regiment 27, 2nd Marine Logistics Group, II Marine Expeditionary Force, the Marine Corps said. She joined the service on June 6, 2006
Now, I know this is not really relevant to the story, but I really have to say... since when can our military personnel not afford to raise a baby? This is EXACTLY how coercion happens. Humans suck sometimes.
And worse (and this is, obviously, speculation), it looks like this young girl might have felt she had no choice but to turn back to the father- a man who RAPED HER, because her mother was trying to coerce her into an adoption... I wonder how mom feels now about trying to pressure her daughter into surrendering her child and most likely pushing her straight into the arms of a murdering rapist because she had nowhere else to turn- not even her own family.
Monstrous all the way around.
JACKSONVILLE, North Carolina (CNN) -- Lance Cpl. Maria Lauterbach, the pregnant Marine who was missing from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, is dead, the Onslow County sheriff said Friday.
Lance Cpl. Maria Lauterbach last spoke to relatives in the Dayton, Ohio, area on December 14.
The suspect in the case is Cpl. Cesar Armando Lauren, 21, a fellow Marine whom Lauterbach had accused of sexual assault, Sheriff Ed Brown said at a news conference Friday.
Lauren is not in custody, Brown said, and a search is on for him. He said Lauren had left the Camp Lejeune area about 4 a.m. Friday, with nearly an eight-hour head start before the hunt for him began.
Authorities were looking for his black Dodge quad-cab pickup with North Carolina license plate TRR 1522, Brown said, adding that Lauren should turn himself in.
"We'll get him one way or the other, somewhere," he told CNN.
Brown said authorities had obtained physical evidence of Lauterbach's death that also linked Lauren to the case. He would not elaborate on that evidence.
Asked how Lauterbach died, Brown would only speak "of an injury to her."
He said investigators are looking for the woman's body in a residential wooded area in Onslow County and hoped to find it before dark Friday.
Brown said investigators learned of Lauterbach's death Friday morning when a former Marine contacted military authorities.
The sheriff had expected a positive outcome in the case earlier in the day.
"I just wanted to cry" when learning of her death, he said.
Paul Ciccarelli, a special agent with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, said Lauren had carried on a relationship with Lauterbach after her rape complaint against him.
Lauterbach was to give testimony in a military hearing on the rape charges scheduled for late December, Ciccarelli said.
Ciccarelli said Lauren had not been considered a flight risk.
Lauterbach, 20, last contacted her family in Ohio on December 14 and was reported missing by her mother on December 19.
Documents released by Onslow County authorities on Thursday had indicated Lauterbach may have gone off on her own willingly, perhaps after being upset by a phone call.
The woman's mother, Mary Lauterbach, described having a "firm conversation" with Maria Lauterbach about her unborn child, telling her she should give the baby up for adoption because she is unable to care for it. Watch police face unanswered questions »
"Ms. Maria Lauterbach was telling Mary Lauterbach everything was fine, but Mary Lauterbach had a sense that the statements were not accurate," the report said.
The Marine Corps had brought Lauterbach's roommate, Sgt. Daniel Robert Durham, back to North Carolina from a training deployment in California to answer questions, but Brown said Friday he was not a suspect in her death.
The Onslow County report said Durham told police that he had made his home available to Lauterbach "out of sympathy for her situation" and that the two had shared the home for a short period of time.
Durham said he noticed nothing unusual in Lauterbach's behavior before she disappeared, but he said, "She had been upset by a phone call from her stepmother."
A few items of Lauterbach's were missing, he said -- her car, some cosmetics and clothing -- that led him to believe she may have left willingly. However, Durham told police that Lauterbach was confined to bed most of the time because of her pregnancy and that she "was in no shape for extended outings," according to the reports.
Brown called Durham a close friend.
Brown said Lauterbach may have been due to give birth January 8. The police reports, however, said she was due on February 14 and did not show up for a prenatal medical appointment December 28.
Lauterbach's cell phone was found on a roadside near Camp Lejeune on December 20. Her car was found Monday in the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant, Brown said, and apparently had been there since December 15.
Investigators have said a withdrawal from Lauterbach's bank account was made on December 14 and there was "suspicious activity" on the account 10 days later. Police reports said Lauterbach's ATM card was used at a Marine Federal Credit Union by a man who attempted to cover the surveillance camera with a rag while he withdrew money from her account.
Lauterbach was a personnel clerk assigned to Combat Logistics Regiment 27, 2nd Marine Logistics Group, II Marine Expeditionary Force, the Marine Corps said. She joined the service on June 6, 2006
Now, I know this is not really relevant to the story, but I really have to say... since when can our military personnel not afford to raise a baby? This is EXACTLY how coercion happens. Humans suck sometimes.
And worse (and this is, obviously, speculation), it looks like this young girl might have felt she had no choice but to turn back to the father- a man who RAPED HER, because her mother was trying to coerce her into an adoption... I wonder how mom feels now about trying to pressure her daughter into surrendering her child and most likely pushing her straight into the arms of a murdering rapist because she had nowhere else to turn- not even her own family.
Monstrous all the way around.
I have been informed that adoption coercion doesn't exist
One of my delightful visitors informed me that no woman is EVER coerced or extorted into giving up their child for adoption. These are just ways that women excuse their OWN completely free-will decision. You see, even if SHE were under threat of life and limb, she would not give up her child- she knows this because she's infertile.
I decided to delete her post because she's an idiot. There are several ways that I know she's an idiot:
-- She lives in some fantasy world where people cannot ever be coerced into something they don't really want to do.
-- She believes that "it's a good thing someone else is raising your child because you're angry."
The second one is my favorite one. I know why people say it. They say it because they are angry that I have the unmitigated gall to be angry that my son was extorted from me. So they are trying to hurt me. But really, the truth of the matter is, they just make themselves look like their brains have fallen out of their head.
Let's do the math: I lost my child to adoption. I got angry. Had I not lost my son, I wouldn't be angry. Duh, dumbass.
Of course, I've been on the Earth long enough by this time that I know that stupidity knows no limits. People honestly aren't able to put two and two together... if I hadn't lost my son, I wouldn't be so angry. This is obvious.
But then again, this is more of the adoption rhetoric. Of course, anyone who is angry about one thing is out there kicking their cat, beating their children, strangling their spouse, burning down buildings, and otherwise being angry about everything in their life. I guess, since they are on my blog saying angry things, we need to take their children away. OBVIOUSLY, they are abusing them.
Of course, I know they don't really believe that. They're just trying to hurt me, because they're angry at me for my own anger. They are uncomfortable, seeing the tremendous pain caused by something that they worship as wonderful. They are enraged that someone is destroying their fragile ignorance.
And that, I think, is what it boils down to with this woman. She is so infuriated to learn that she is not the saint she thinks she is. She is desperate to hold onto the belief that it really WAS "her" breeder's choice (she refuses to accept that, by calling her child's mother "her" "birthmother," she is dehumanizing this woman) to lose her child to the adoption machine.
I am sorry for this woman, who has lost her innocence. Who is lashing out at me because I am the messenger who has broken the fragile ignorance that kept her believing that she did the right thing by participating in causing this woman to be attached to an adoptive couple and to feel like she can't disappoint them. I have pried open the vault of her mind and reality is beginning to set in. She is fighting it every step of the way.
She claims that my site can accomplish nothing because it's full of anger. Yet, I realized after a night's sleep, that the blog has already accomplished something. It has wrenched open the ignorant vice that has held her mind in thrall. It has begun in her the process of realization. These thoughts will niggle at her. She will question. She will wonder.
She is angry that I am angry. She is angry because I didn't keep my place and agree that it WAS really MY decision. She is angry because it hurts to know that she participated in coercing a woman out of her child.
She is angry because she is beginning to realize that her self-rightous condemnation of "her birthmother" and the fact that this woman could relinquish a child is distorted. She is angry because she is beginning to realize that just as it would be wrong for someone to take HER child, maybe... just maybe... it was wrong of her to participate in taking someone ELSE'S child.
Yesterday, I really believed she was mad at me. I took it personally.
But today, oddly, something happened and I realized the sad, sad truth. She is angry at herself. Her mind has been pried open, and it hurts. It hurts to realize that she has most likely helped to inflict upon a woman wounds as big as mine.
I thought about pulling this blog down. I thought, "Yeah, she's probably right, this blog is pretty useless." In spite of Anna's words, I still considered it.
But now I realize that, even my anger has its use. It has its point.
It is waking people up. It is stirring them up. They are being made uncomfortable. Because their minds are being pried open. Their ignorant "It is ALWAYS REALLY the mother's choice" is being challenged, and it is painful.
So, I'm leaving my anger here. I'm leaving it here to wake people up. To shake them up. To challenge their complacent belief that coercion doesn't exist. To piss them off with truths they don't want to face.
In your face, baby. In your face.
Coercion is real. It happens regularly.
And you, dear "anonymous," participated actively in it. Just because that's not a reality you like, it's still reality. And yeah, having thought it over, I'm glad it pisses you off.
I decided to delete her post because she's an idiot. There are several ways that I know she's an idiot:
-- She lives in some fantasy world where people cannot ever be coerced into something they don't really want to do.
-- She believes that "it's a good thing someone else is raising your child because you're angry."
The second one is my favorite one. I know why people say it. They say it because they are angry that I have the unmitigated gall to be angry that my son was extorted from me. So they are trying to hurt me. But really, the truth of the matter is, they just make themselves look like their brains have fallen out of their head.
Let's do the math: I lost my child to adoption. I got angry. Had I not lost my son, I wouldn't be angry. Duh, dumbass.
Of course, I've been on the Earth long enough by this time that I know that stupidity knows no limits. People honestly aren't able to put two and two together... if I hadn't lost my son, I wouldn't be so angry. This is obvious.
But then again, this is more of the adoption rhetoric. Of course, anyone who is angry about one thing is out there kicking their cat, beating their children, strangling their spouse, burning down buildings, and otherwise being angry about everything in their life. I guess, since they are on my blog saying angry things, we need to take their children away. OBVIOUSLY, they are abusing them.
Of course, I know they don't really believe that. They're just trying to hurt me, because they're angry at me for my own anger. They are uncomfortable, seeing the tremendous pain caused by something that they worship as wonderful. They are enraged that someone is destroying their fragile ignorance.
And that, I think, is what it boils down to with this woman. She is so infuriated to learn that she is not the saint she thinks she is. She is desperate to hold onto the belief that it really WAS "her" breeder's choice (she refuses to accept that, by calling her child's mother "her" "birthmother," she is dehumanizing this woman) to lose her child to the adoption machine.
I am sorry for this woman, who has lost her innocence. Who is lashing out at me because I am the messenger who has broken the fragile ignorance that kept her believing that she did the right thing by participating in causing this woman to be attached to an adoptive couple and to feel like she can't disappoint them. I have pried open the vault of her mind and reality is beginning to set in. She is fighting it every step of the way.
She claims that my site can accomplish nothing because it's full of anger. Yet, I realized after a night's sleep, that the blog has already accomplished something. It has wrenched open the ignorant vice that has held her mind in thrall. It has begun in her the process of realization. These thoughts will niggle at her. She will question. She will wonder.
She is angry that I am angry. She is angry because I didn't keep my place and agree that it WAS really MY decision. She is angry because it hurts to know that she participated in coercing a woman out of her child.
She is angry because she is beginning to realize that her self-rightous condemnation of "her birthmother" and the fact that this woman could relinquish a child is distorted. She is angry because she is beginning to realize that just as it would be wrong for someone to take HER child, maybe... just maybe... it was wrong of her to participate in taking someone ELSE'S child.
Yesterday, I really believed she was mad at me. I took it personally.
But today, oddly, something happened and I realized the sad, sad truth. She is angry at herself. Her mind has been pried open, and it hurts. It hurts to realize that she has most likely helped to inflict upon a woman wounds as big as mine.
I thought about pulling this blog down. I thought, "Yeah, she's probably right, this blog is pretty useless." In spite of Anna's words, I still considered it.
But now I realize that, even my anger has its use. It has its point.
It is waking people up. It is stirring them up. They are being made uncomfortable. Because their minds are being pried open. Their ignorant "It is ALWAYS REALLY the mother's choice" is being challenged, and it is painful.
So, I'm leaving my anger here. I'm leaving it here to wake people up. To shake them up. To challenge their complacent belief that coercion doesn't exist. To piss them off with truths they don't want to face.
In your face, baby. In your face.
Coercion is real. It happens regularly.
And you, dear "anonymous," participated actively in it. Just because that's not a reality you like, it's still reality. And yeah, having thought it over, I'm glad it pisses you off.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
People keep whining that I'm so angry
Can people be so stupid?
Yeah, I'm angry. Yeah, I'm raging.
MY CHILD WAS STOLEN FROM ME.
I can't believe that anyone is stupid enough to think that this wouldn't leave a lasting anger.
And not only was my baby stolen, but I spent 14 years being told that I SHOULD BE HAPPY ABOUT IT, and getting guilt trips about it when I DARED to express that I was NOT happy about it AT ALL.
Yes, people can be so stupid.
Hell YES, I am FUCKING ANGRY.
There is something psychologically fucked up about you people who are so stupid that you think anger is an UNREASONABLE REACTION to having your child stolen from you through extortion.
Every one of you that tell me "get help" because I'm angry are the ones who need to get some counseling. The very fact that you think a towering anger is an irrational and unreasonable response to what happened to me shows that you lack any and all understanding of psychology and of human nature and of reality. Anyone who is NOT angry after their child is extorted from them is the one that is fucked in the head.
The fact that so many of you are so uncomfortable in the face of my anger goes to show part of what's so horrifically wrong with the adoption system in our country. You all are so upset that I am angry. You want me to get properly back into my closet because YOU don't like my anger. YOU are uncomfortable, and rather than ask yourself, "How the hell does someone get to the point where they are this angry??" you just tell me to stop being angry.
What kind of fucking MORON tells someone whose child was extorted and coerced from them to stop being angry?
You people are the ones with the severe malfunction. I already see a counselor, and I already know that my anger is not only reasonable and rational, but it's the completely expected and NORMAL reaction. The many years I spent hiding and denying my anger are what brought me to the point where I am livid.
Thanks to dumb cunts like those who come here and tell me to stop being angry.
I repeat, because apparently I have to repeat it every month:
Don't like me? GOOD. Don't like my anger? GOOD.
THIS is what adoption coercion and extortion create.
That you don't like it is the beginning of a very good change.
So please, hate me. You helped create me. If you don't like me, then you had better become active in making sure no more "me's" are created.
Yeah, I'm angry. Yeah, I'm raging.
MY CHILD WAS STOLEN FROM ME.
I can't believe that anyone is stupid enough to think that this wouldn't leave a lasting anger.
And not only was my baby stolen, but I spent 14 years being told that I SHOULD BE HAPPY ABOUT IT, and getting guilt trips about it when I DARED to express that I was NOT happy about it AT ALL.
Yes, people can be so stupid.
Hell YES, I am FUCKING ANGRY.
There is something psychologically fucked up about you people who are so stupid that you think anger is an UNREASONABLE REACTION to having your child stolen from you through extortion.
Every one of you that tell me "get help" because I'm angry are the ones who need to get some counseling. The very fact that you think a towering anger is an irrational and unreasonable response to what happened to me shows that you lack any and all understanding of psychology and of human nature and of reality. Anyone who is NOT angry after their child is extorted from them is the one that is fucked in the head.
The fact that so many of you are so uncomfortable in the face of my anger goes to show part of what's so horrifically wrong with the adoption system in our country. You all are so upset that I am angry. You want me to get properly back into my closet because YOU don't like my anger. YOU are uncomfortable, and rather than ask yourself, "How the hell does someone get to the point where they are this angry??" you just tell me to stop being angry.
What kind of fucking MORON tells someone whose child was extorted and coerced from them to stop being angry?
You people are the ones with the severe malfunction. I already see a counselor, and I already know that my anger is not only reasonable and rational, but it's the completely expected and NORMAL reaction. The many years I spent hiding and denying my anger are what brought me to the point where I am livid.
Thanks to dumb cunts like those who come here and tell me to stop being angry.
I repeat, because apparently I have to repeat it every month:
Don't like me? GOOD. Don't like my anger? GOOD.
THIS is what adoption coercion and extortion create.
That you don't like it is the beginning of a very good change.
So please, hate me. You helped create me. If you don't like me, then you had better become active in making sure no more "me's" are created.
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
Thank you for all the press!
I'm so honored that you care so much about me that you are linking me all over the place! Thanks, how sweet of you!
And by the way, I'm not posting "myths" about infertiles at all.
I was infertile myself and went through many years of trying to concieve. I finally had my daughter, ironically when I wasn't trying.
Do yourself a favor, though, idiot, and actually read who posted what you're crying about. It was posted by a commentor, not by me.
Fucktard.
And by the way, I'm not posting "myths" about infertiles at all.
I was infertile myself and went through many years of trying to concieve. I finally had my daughter, ironically when I wasn't trying.
Do yourself a favor, though, idiot, and actually read who posted what you're crying about. It was posted by a commentor, not by me.
Fucktard.
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