Haven't been around a long time, so long I lost my password to my old blog. So what's new? Apparently, there is something that's not really new out there in adoptionland, but, the "new" thing is horribly vicious, and needlessly cruel. All one need do is look at my lovely friend Claud's Facebook, or her blog to see it.
While these days find me in exactly one group about adoption, I have not, in fact, lost touch with what is going on. Let me just put this out there right up front ok? I don't give a damn who you are, you do not get to speak for all adoptees if you're an adoptee, nor do you get to speak for all natural mothers if you are a natural mother. All of us, adoptees, and natural mothers, only get to speak for ourselves. Now, this does not mean we don't get to speak up about what is going on with individuals in those groups. So there's that-
With that said, let's talk about "relinquishers." Yes, you read that right, that is what some have taken to calling mothers of loss. Ugly word isn't it? Now let me just get this part out there too. If that's what you call your natural mother, well you just go right ahead and do that. But, here's the thing, you do not get to call all natural mothers that. You don't get to claim you corner the market on pain, or loss, or anything else involved in the horror that is adoption. I do not give shit one that you think it's ok to do this. What I do care about, is this, that the mentality of you and your cronies allows you to gang up on a woman who has given decades of her life fighting for adoptee rights, a woman who has done so, because, she actually cares that all adoptees who want their OBC, have the right to that document, and that those who want their OBC are able to get a copy of it. Why you think it's ok to malign a woman who has done nothing but fight for you, and your rights is beyond me. I don't care that you will most likely come after me for daring to express my thoughts on this subject, nor do I care that you will try to bully me, and berate me for those thoughts. I DO NOT CARE! Give it your best shot, I've had worse things done to me, have been called worse things than a "relinquisher," I've been beaten, both mentally and physically, I've been ignored, called names, reviled, and thrown to the wolves (metaphorically speaking) on more than one occasion. I've had my own child call me horrible names, and that child has refused to speak to me for years now. Nothing you say, or do could be worse than that. I own my part in what happened to the two of us, but I refuse to keep paying for it. I've paid the price a thousand times over, just as so many mothers of loss have paid it. It is not for you to call any mother other than your own a relinquisher. Just as I have no right to speak for all mothers of loss, you do not have the right to speak for all adoptees. You have the right to speak your pain, to vent and scream and cry, and all the other things that go with that pain. I don't get to shush you, I don't get to deny your pain, or you rage, it's not my place. Just as it is not your place to call out an entire population of people, and label them. Hasn't it ever occurred to you that by eating our own we accomplish nothing? Yet, I have seen exactly that for years and years now. We eat our own. How sickening that thought is to me, how horrible that the people most affected by adoption do that to each other. I stopped blogging, I stopped trying, and this is why. We.Eat.Our.Own. it has to stop- Nothing is ever going to change unless we do.
Claud, I am always proud of you, I am always cheering you on, I love you and I am so, so proud to call you my friend. Keep on keeping on, you are the embodiment of this saying "Be the change you wish to see in the world" and I couldn't be more proud of you. You are a better woman than I am, please don't ever change.
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