Living in the Shadows

One year on...

2012-01-09T01:50:00.001+11:00

"My Heart is Broken" - lyrics by Evanescence

I pulled away to face the pain
I close my eyes and drift away
over the fear that I will never find a way to heal my soul
and I will wander till the end of time
torn away from you

My heart is broken
sweet sleep, my dark angel
deliver us from sorrow’s hold (over my heart)

I can’t go on living this way
But I can’t go back the way I came
chained to this fear that I will never find a way to heal my soul
and I will wander till the end of time
half alive without you

My heart is broken
sweet sleep, my dark angel
deliver us

Change
Open your eyes to the light
I denied it all so long, oh so long
Say goodbye
Goodbye

My heart is broken
release me, I can’t hold on
deliver us

My heart is broken
sweet sleep, my dark angel
deliver us

My heart is broken
sweet sleep, my dark angel
deliver us from sorrow’s hold

A lot happens in a year. And that certainly has been true for me for 2011! However not so much has happened that I would forget last January 9 was the day another mother of a lost and stolen child made the decision to put an end to her pain by taking her life. (See this post from last year)

I think of Kristy often and wonder what might have been for her if she had held out a little longer. I grieve for her and her daughters as they will be permanently separated forever and that is heartbreaking. Kristy was a very intelligent and articulate young woman and I know she could have made an impact on our world. I just miss her and wonder about her girls...

Today also marks a year since I last saw my girl. That last visit which was just like any other. Nothing special indicating it would be the final visit for some time to come. But nonetheless, it was. It was also this day that haunted me until I screamed 'Enough'! and finally took back my power by making a choice for the first time. It might not have been the best choice but at least I have taken charge and made one which, although for now has cost me her, has saved my sanity and the life I want with my family, my other children who need and deserve me as much as Amber has had me.

Although I have tried to say very little here of late, I still miss her. Alot. It still hurts. Alot. This year has been much better and I have been less vocal in here thanks to life. But there are always the quiet moments. Time in the dark spaces when no one needs or wants me when I think of her, long for her. Where I wonder what she is thinking, what she is doing. The lyrics and the music of the song posted above is where I have been at. Yes, I am doing much better and I will continue to do better because that is what I want... but the truth is, it never goes away. Not completely. Not even mostly. She is always there, just out of reach. But I know there is not much I can do about that now. So my resolve is to live my life and be as happy as I possibly can to fill the waiting days and years before hopefully one day she comes back to me.

Welcome 2012

2012-01-02T13:04:00.000+11:00

And so it is another year has passed us by and we are standing at the beginning of a new chapter; a new year ahead of us.

I want to wish everyone who passes by this blog, a very Happy New Year. May 2012 bring blessings, joy, stability and Justice.

From our home to yours, I send love and peace and hope that 2012 is a year to remember for all the right reasons.

xxx

Christmas greetings

2011-12-23T08:02:00.000+11:00

And so Christmas 2011 is almost here.

Our house has been filled with the smells of Christmas baking, giggling and excited children who have been counting down the nights to Santa's arrival and of course the various Christmas carols and songs - as many as I could find!

As always, there is a sadness surrounding the edges of this happiness and joy. Always the thoughts of another person who should be here sharing this with her sister and brother; experiencing the full family Christmas and just being surrounded by the love we have always known.

My wish this year is for everyone to be surrounded by love; not just at Christmas but all through the year - that you will experience the good that still exists in this world despite its best effort to hide itself!

Again, I want to say a massive thank you to all my readers, friends, supporters and family who have read my blog and regardless of whether our views are the same or not have still shown me grace and compassion. Bless you and your family and may this Christmas and 2012 be filled with light and joy.

With much love as ever,
Myst

Some favourite Christmas quotes:

"Mankind is a great, an immense family... This is proved by what we feel in our hearts at Christmas."
~ Pope John XXIII

"Christmas--that magic blanket that wraps itself about us, that something so intangible that it is like a fragrance. It may weave a spell of nostalgia. Christmas may be a day of feasting, or of prayer, but always it will be a day of remembrance--a day in which we think of everything we have ever loved."
~ Augusta E. Rundell

"Christmas is a necessity. There has to be at least one day of the year to remind us that we're here for something else besides ourselves."
~ Eric Sevareid (1912-1992), American newscaster.

"Christmas is the keeping-place for memories of our innocence."
~ Joan Mills

"It is Christmas in the heart that puts Christmas in the air."
~ W. T. Ellis

"Christmas is for children. But it is for grown-ups too. Even if it is a headache, a chore, and nightmare, it is a period of necessary defrosting of chill and hide-bound hearts.
~Lenora Mattingly Weber

Merry Christmas everyone and a very Happy New Year!

An Open Letter from an adopted adult

2011-12-11T17:39:00.002+11:00

Recently I read a couple of blog posts which shared the following letter from an adult adoptee to Adoptive Parents, PAPs etc. I have since discovered the author and have been given permission to share the letter here and so I will link to one of the blog posts who have shared it.

Before I do, may I suggest in reading it through please do so with an open mind. This letter is not an attack on you if you have adopted nor is it telling you how to feel. Rather it is a perspective all to commonly ignored and dismissed in adoption and given adoption is SUPPOSED to be about those being adopted, one would think their views would be given the greatest weight, even and especially when they highlight what is wrong with the system. I have the greatest respect for my adult adoptee friends who, despite knowing the backlash they will and do encounter, brave this to put out the truth of adoption and what their experience was and is like.

All too often I see in blog land and indeed on my own blog that unless any of us bow to the 'popular' view of holding adoption up as being fantastic, saving children etc then not only are we ridiculed and put down, we are outright attacked.

So again, please read this letter with an open mind and respect, compassion and empathy towards another human being who may not see adoption as you do.

The Letter (via a blog author who DID NOT write the letter)

Musings

2011-11-30T20:37:00.001+11:00

Life is still good. In fact, I doubt it was not life that was ever not good - it was what happened in life that was plain out bad.

I am happy... and yet there will always be a piece of me that stares out the window, wondering what she is doing today. Wondering what is happening with her at school, in her life. Has she been to the latest Twilight flick? What did she think of the final Harry Potter movie? What is she reading now?

Every day, I still check my emails, hoping just a little there might be something from her. Of course there isn't.

I miss her alot but I don't miss the visits. They were never about her and I connecting. They were all about her adopters ensuring we didn't. For now maybe they won but really, I couldn't live with myself if I ever inflicted that much pain on another person and I could have prevented it. I couldn't.

As Christmas draws close, she is on my mind alot. With her sister talking about her so much, she will never be forgotten in our house.

The Christmas Tree is up, the decorations are on display. And despite the glorious sunshine, the warmth and comfort in the rays of Happiness, I feel a familiar chill in the air. I shudder. It is something I can never escape. The missing. That hole I can never fill no matter what I do.

Life in the Sunshine...

2011-11-02T01:15:00.001+11:00

It has been some time since I visited my blog to either read or update.

Life has been good in my absence. We bought a house in New Zealand and will be moving late 2012 and then visited my sister in England. Whilst over that side of the world, we also stopped by the east side of Holland, ate chocolate and drank tea in Bruges, Belgium and stayed in a little medieval town in France. Dreams I thought forever gone came true only weeks ago and my heart has had new life breathed into it; my blood is flowing with warmth - the ice has truly melted. I met the parts of me I thought buried and gone forever while roaming the streets of London in Convent Garden, the Strand and Picadilly Circus. I reconnected with the me I knew before my rape and subsequent pregnancy. It has been ecstasy and pain all mingled together to finally find the pieces of myself that were shattered so far and to gather them to me.

Once upon a time, as a young and naive 19 year old, my hopes had been to complete my early childhood education and head to England for work where I could explore the cities of my dreams and realise who I was. It was not to be. Instead, I found myself in a nightmare - raped, pregnant and my child taken - my life for the last 14 years. Those years have been nothing but agony, torture, pain I could never describe and utter horror. But, for the first time, coming out of this year, I feel hope. Peace. A sense of more to life than this.

What of Amber? To be honest, I do not know. There has been no contact since that last telephone conversation with my mother and email in June and as they have prevented her from contacting me or returning any of my emails, I am letting go. She will always be my girl and my heart is always open to her however as much as she did not ask for her adoption, I did not ask for this twist in my life and the pain that came about. I have tasted joy and hope in a way I never dreamed possible again and so I want to follow that. Holding on to my grief and anguish never served me or her so now I am going to live as I have been these past few months.

For the first time in 14 years I can say I have finally seen the Sunshine through all the rain and as I look toward the path I now travel, I see a bright future which includes all my children because Love will win in the end. How? Because I won't accept anything less.

The rain has stopped, the colours of the rainbow are spectacular and Sunshine is forecast for some time to come...

New Zealand Adoption News

2011-09-01T23:24:00.003+10:00

Recently I discovered New Zealand's ancient Adoption Act 1955 has been amended.

Before the amendment (and indeed post amendment) our archaic and barbaric act is/was a jumble of nonsense and has been unchanged from the days of old where the government and hospitals then later lawyers and judges took matters into their own hands and forced adoptions; in some cases outright stealing newborns from their mothers. Coercion and duress are just a part of the furniture - well practised and well denied; swept under the proverbial carpet.

However in August 2011, an amendment was made to the Act that SHOULD change this cruel practise (although I am not holding my breath).

This amendment made to the act seeks to supposedly protect women from being coerced and forced to sign an adoption consent by making this practise criminal. In fact, anyone caught doing this can face up to seven years imprisonment. For the actual wording please see below:

"The Parliament of New Zealand enacts as follows:
1 Title
This Act is the Adoption Amendment Act 2011.

2 Commencement
This Act comes into force on the day after the date on which it receives the Royal assent.

3 Principal Act amended
This Act amends the Adoption Act 1955.

4 Purpose of this Act
The purpose of this Act is to enable New Zealand to meet its international obligations under Article 3(1)(a)(ii) of the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography by creating a new offence prohibiting the improper inducement of a consent for the adoption of a child.

5 Offences
(1) The heading to section 27 is amended by omitting "“Offences”" and substituting "“Summary offences”".
(2) Section 27(3) is repealed.

6 New sections 27A to 27D inserted
The following sections are inserted after section 27:
“27A Offence to induce consent
“(1) Every person commits an offence who induces another person, by fraud, duress, undue influence (by payment or otherwise), or other improper means, to consent to an adoption.
“(2) Every person who commits an offence under subsection (1) is liable on conviction on indictment to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 7 years.
“27B Safety of child where offence committed

“(1) Where a Court is satisfied that an offence against section 27 or 27A has been committed in respect of any child, the Court may order the child to be removed to a place of safety until—
“(a) the child can be restored to his or her parent or guardian; or
“(b) other arrangements can be made for the child.
“(2) Subsection (1) applies whether or not any person has been convicted of the offence."

So, looks like some great stuff right? Bring out the champagne and all that? Sadly I would say hold on those celebrations for now. Because duress, coercion and fraud are ALREADY criminal acts and stating it in the Act will hardly change a thing. Why do I say this? Because I had PROOF of my coerced and wrongly obtained consent and yet we still decided against this line of action for the court battle as it is vitually impossible to get this recognised by the courts even with evidence. Why? Because at the end of the day it is up to the judge and many (not all) of the family court judges in New Zealand are from a cruel era where mother and child were routinely separated and mother was thrown to the gutter and her baby forgotten. Thankfully the so called 'judge' at my last hearing, is dead. I was not the only victim to this 'man's' cruel actions. The 'man' couldn't even look at me in the hearing or my father, coward.

So yes, while it appears to be all great news, my faith in the New Zealand adoption process is nil. Why? Because only this year a friend of mine was driven to suicide as a result of the anguish adoption caused in her when her child was stolen from her only 5 years ago. And she is not the only one. This amendment only contradicts the Consent withdrawl section of the act which states clearly there is no revocation period so if a mother was to sign a consent under duress and once the duress was over, she would still have little chance of getting her child back, regardless of what the amendment states.

After thinking this over, my view on this is a waste of space and time. New Zealand, get rid of your rotting adoption system which only serves the adopters who get their booty. You don't offer protection to your mothers and children and you fail the UN Declaration of Human Rights including the rights of the Child. If you want to serve Human Rights, you would scrap this worthless and cruel act and replace it with a system that serves the CHILDREN in NEED and NOT the self serving adults who want to 'build' a 'family' with the children of other families. If you chose to continue this barbaric piece of legislation then you show yourself to be a liar.

Adoptee Rights - San Antonio

2011-08-05T11:35:00.000+10:00

In my whirlwind of the past few weeks I have failed to mention the upcoming Demostration day for Adoptee Rights in San Antonio.

What is the Adoptee Rights Demonstration Day, you might ask? You know this 'wonderful, loving, gift' of adoption? Well turns out it takes more than just your family away and replace it with another one. It also takes away from adopted persons/adoptees their rights to what every other person has access to: their birth certificate - the one issued at birth. Currently, 44 states in the USA do not allow adoptees the right to access their original birth certificates. Some of you may not understand the significance of that. Well how can we, who have never had any issue getting ours see the significance? Like many issues in this world, unless something affects us directly, we seem to not really care all that much and therefore remain ignorant to the wider issues this affects.

Imagine not being able to find out where you came from, getting a passport or another vital document? How easy is it to take our basic rights for granted when nothing prevents us from accessing our own original birth certificate?

Cassi over at Adoption Truth has written this great post about going to the Demonstration and the ridiculous legislation that is essentially adoption. In no other institution can a woman who is a complete stranger be made out to be a "birth" mother of a child she has adopted. The more I read about adoption law, the more I desire to see it abolished. It is not there to serve anyone but those adopting and that is why it has always been around. If it cared one iota about the person being adopted, it would have preserved their basic of rights and the issue of Original Birth Certificates would be unnecessary.

Yeah, I know...

2011-06-29T23:40:00.003+10:00

... I was meant to be gone. Off living my life, dancing in the rain and all that jazz and something did shift for a couple of weeks. I posted links, determined to just keep the word of others out there and slowly wean myself away from this scene (I just love blogland because I know so many awesome people here and leaving cold was never going to be easy for me hence the linking etc) and eventually, cease blogging.

But, I forgot one essential thing. Adoption is a life sentence. It is not something you can chose to be part of or leave. Once cast to its belly, you are there forever. I honestly felt so free and alive. Like I was walking out of some dungeon and I could see the world outside, beckoning me. Just as I was about to step out into that glorious sunshine and embrace a world full of colour, a door from nowhere swung closed in my face. Silly girl, did you really think you could get away?

So I am back here again, polarised by recent events and hurt by more lies which are ultimately hurting my daughter.

Here is a recap on recent events:

We had the meeting in May where visits were for now, ceased as personally I need time to heal this wound that is opened up every time I see my daughter's adopters. Because in my case it wasn't a system that took my child but them, seeing their faces every visit only put me back into that time where I was helpless and alone. For me, I needed to put an end to that and so I requested visits be only with Amber. Apparently her adoptive 'mother' said they asked her input and she wasn't keen and wanted them to continue as before. I had a feeling this might happen so I wasn't unprepared or concerned about it. Knowing her adoptive 'mother' as I do, my daughter has been made to serve where she is at emotionally her whole life; I saw this first hand from the age of 6 months and it revolted me. No person should ever be made to carry such a heavy burden especially at such a young age. Anyway, I told the adopters I understood however I personally could no longer proceed with visits with them there so I would no longer be attending them. You should have seen their faces. I think they thought if they framed it as coming from her, I would buckle. One thing I have learned is I won't fall for their games any longer and if they chose my daughter to play the games for them then I will hold THEM responsible.

I was very honest with them at the visit and pretty much told them what they did was take Amber; that I never gave her up willingly and that they had known that. To which they said nothing. I also later said that we wouldn't be in this situation now if it wasn't for what they had done to take her from me in the first place. Male adopter's response: "Well we have a different view on that". No, really?? I would never have guessed. Moron.

Throughout the visit, adoptress basically said she didn't feel there would be much of a chance for our relationship in the future, saying that "Amber just isn't that brave". Um, okay. We'll see. I also discovered our emails had basically been stopped by them although they THEN tried to cover that by saying she just wasn't interested in emailing me etc. Funny given the fact she emailed me first and despite her adopter telling her she couldn't give me her mobile number she did anyway. So many contradictions, the lies keep piling up.

So our meeting ended and as I suspected visits between my girl and I ended. My mum, sister and I decided they would keep seeing her so she wouldn't feel completely abandoned but I knew she would feel like I was aiming this at her.

The following day after the visit in May, I emailed male adopter and suggested one last visit with all of us (them included) to give her a chance to say goodbye for now. I also wanted to tell her this was not about her and that when she was/is ready to see me by herself I would be ready. I got no answer.

That was the last week of May/first week of June. Fast forward to last week. My mum emailed male adopter and asked him what he thought of my idea. He emailed saying can we chat. Over this weekend, I had an intense dream of my daughter where we were sitting down having a deep discussion and she told me she was really angry with me and she felt abandoned by me. In the dream however we were able to resolve this and it ended well. Oh for life to imitate dreamland!

Monday this week male adopter rang my mum back and told her Amber had been in hospital seriously ill a couple of weeks ago for five days on antibiotics for a super bug. I flipped when I heard this news. They are supposed to tell me the minute she is sick and yet we were finding out now, two weeks later. He then went on to say that Amber is angry with me and wants nothing to do with me so a goodbye visit is out of the question. She feels rejected again (hmmm, funny he says again as he has never been honest about her feeling this way in the past). He also said I had hard questions to face in the years to come. Funny that one. I laughed. I welcome the hard questions because I know they won't like the outcome of the answers. She has no idea what they did to steal her from us and if they think I won't tell her one day they are in la la land.

He also had a few other digs at me and came out with another lie saying they were going to meet with me about my wanting Amber back all those years ago but because of the court summons they decided not to. I was amazed he was going to this extent. So far, they had had the phone call at the three day agreed period to say what I wanted to do and when Mum relayed I wanted to raise Amber they ended the conversation. A week later they received my letter asking them to give her back to me which they replied saying no, she was theirs. Then my father called and spoke to them and discussed it with male adopter and then followed that up with a lengthy three page fax. This too was ignored. By this stage I was in New Zealand and had commenced legal action which they were aware of. Around this time, I wrote another letter, BEGGING them not to take her. Through their lawyer, they contacted MY lawyer and arranged a date to meet which a day before they decided against. My lawyer never sent them a court summons. All they ever got was a notification, AT the Interim hearing that I had withdrawn my consent. So I am at a loss to fathom how they can now turn around and lie about not knowing about the court proceedings when I made it clear I would fight for her. They ignored me so of course I sought legal advice. They have told themselves so many lies over the years it has turned into truth and yet I think because I have read and reread the court papers so many times, I know the timeline that is on file like the back of my hand. I don't need to lie because at least I have truth on my side.

So there you have it. Visits are still off but I have a feeling this will be ongoing. I will still fight for my life and that of my other children but it is so much harder than I ever felt it could be. I accept Amber is angry with me, hell I would be too. But I also know this anger is based on the little information she has and that I haven't actually done anything wrong so I lay the responsibility of that hurt at the feet of her adopters who caused it. I also feel anger is better than nothing - at least it shows she cares and that is enough to give the tiniest spark of hope to hold onto.

To my daughter's adopters

2011-06-28T10:05:00.004+10:00

I hope you are happy with yourselves for all the hurt and anguish you have caused. For all the lies you have told. For your actions to steal, yes, steal my child from her family. Before you intruded into my life like a rotting disease I had no idea what hatred or real pain was like and I wish I still didn't.

HOW DARE YOU NOT TELL ME MY CHILD HAS BEEN IN HOSPITAL. HOW DARE YOU KEEP IT FROM ME MY CHILD HAS BEEN SICK AND HOW DARE YOU LIE TO HER SO SHE HATES ME. MAY KARMA COME AND GET YOU WHEN YOU LEAST EXPECT IT YOU ROTTEN THIEVING EVIL PIECES OF TRASH.

Signed:
A person who is tired of treating you like you deserve respect and any sort of civility when you have never given any to me or my family and most importantly, my daughter.

New post at Adoption Truth - must read

2011-06-25T10:19:00.000+10:00

Please check out Cassi's new post.

A calm and well reasoned response to a fan of the 'bmombuds' club who feels adoptee rights are not all that important. (Say what???!!!) My view on that: great way to confirm to your child you gave away you don't love them; declare their fight for the same basic rights as anyone else as unimportant. How can someone really profess their love for their child if they don't see them as equal to the rest of society? Nothing says 'love' from a mother more than the dismissal of yourself as an equal to everyone else. Sheesh!

Linking again :) New blog - Lost Daughters

2011-06-19T01:08:00.000+10:00

Here is another fabulous blog I would like to link and draw attention to from a number of awesome ladies out there!

Because I cannot quite find the words to so eloquently introduce them (and wouldn't want to say the wrong thing), I suggest you start here.

I hope you learn alot from these awesome women and understand the complexities adoption brings to those who were supposed to be the most important in the adoption 'decision' but have been largely forgotten: the adoptee. Enjoy!

Lost Daughters

Another blog to read

2011-06-16T22:35:00.000+10:00

This blog will not be popular with everyone, especially with certain persons involved in adoption however it shines a spotlight on the really nasty underside of adoption.

Adoptive Parents Speak

These people who feel they are entitled to another person's family member and then continue to verbally vomit the things you see in this blog disgust me and yet they are more common in adoption than one would care to think. My daughter's own adopters are just as cruel although they would feel they are saints. Sadly, this blog is rather tame. I have come across people more cruel than the ones in here; adopters and paps who wish and pray for the death of another mother so they can get their child; who pray for a mother to break her own heart so they can get THEIR wishes etc. Seriously, no wonder our world is so screwed up with these types of people in it taking what they want at whatever cost to others and a total lack of ethics and morals. Adoption enables this kind of depravity. Adoption has encouraged it and yet still people remain blind to the truth because it doesn't suit them.

NOTE: I do want to say that not all adopters and paps are like this and I do know parents who have adopted that would be shocked at most of the things said in this blog. That said, these adoptive parents seem to be rare. But they are out there.

New blog alert!

2011-06-01T18:47:00.002+10:00

Just popping in to link a blog.

My Lil Ray of Sunshine

A new blog from another mother from New Zealand. She lost her little girl around the time Kristy (KiwiRose) lost hers. Pop on by and have a read. Due to NZ's size, there are not many support places and so this mum really has no one (ahem, well she has me now) so as you did with Kristy, I hope you are able to welcome her into the fold. Thanks so much!!

Love Myst xxx

And so goodnight....

2011-05-29T23:28:00.007+10:00

To my baby girl,

I have carried you in my heart since the day I found out about you and I will carry you until the day I die. However my precious baby, it is time I let you go. You are gone. What we were meant to have can never be and will never be. Things were never meant to be like this; why couldn't we have been left alone? Why did my womb, my heart, my child have anything to do with anybody else? Since when is rape something to be punished for? I have asked myself these questions so many times and there are no comprehendable answers; nothing that makes sense.

I did what I could to hang onto you - fought and fought and fought for you. But now, after all this time, I have to realise I need to let you go. You are gone. This hurts more than I can say and this realisation has been incredibly painful to come to.

Good-bye my beloved daughter, rest in peace. I wish I could say until we meet again but in adoption we never get that luxury. Just know a piece of my heart is always yours and untouchable, unreachable to anyone else.

With all the love in the world and beyond,
your Mother xxx

To all my readers out there, I don't know what will happen from here with this blog. It has taken me on its own journey and I have come to accept that no matter what, the bad of adoption is just so strong, there is no good in it and so I want to close my book on it for now. Over the last 13 years I have advocated for change, researched, supported and worked in adoption. It has been my life. But from what I have learned through other adoptees and mothers is that no matter what, what was lost is lost forever. Reunions fail and the pain wins out. I know adoption is not the worst thing that can happen to a person but for me it has been. I know worse things can happen but right now, losing my baby girl who can never, never come back and things go back to what they were meant to be, is the worst thing in my life. No matter what happens, the loss will always be there and I am so very tired of it all. I want to live, to be happy. I want my Noodle girl and little Dude have a mother who is connected in with them and I just can't if I am so invested in a child that no longer exists. You see, that is the curse of adoption. It takes and never, never, never gives back. It maims, destroys and hurts but never, never, never blesses.

I want to heal what I can of my heart; dance in the rain again - enjoy the rest of my youth while it is still here. I never abandoned my baby. I took responsibility for her; I fought for her. It is her adopters and the system who failed us and I hope they get what they deserve.

As always, much love and thanks for those of you who have cared and have reached out to me. I will be around on facebook and email (myst1998@hotmail.com) etc; just limiting my time spent on anything adoption related.

Cheers,
Myst xxx

Still here!

2011-05-23T12:44:00.001+10:00

I am still around however have just returned from a quick trip to Christchurch to survey damage and visit friends. It was fabulous to be home however also devastating to see the ruins of my very much loved city.

In terms of adoption, I have been taking a little break (although I do not think it is ever really possible to take a break from this issue; it haunts you no matter what!) trying to live and enjoy what I have now and not dwell so much on what will never be. This weekend coming is the meeting regarding visits but to be honest I am just over all of this. I have already lost so much in losing my daughter; my life has never been the same and I am honestly not prepared to feed this monster much more so in some ways I am prepared to let go of my daughter knowing one day she has the choice to find me if she wants. I have done all I can for her and it is not fair on me (mainly because it affects the rest of my family so much) to keep sacrificing my life on this alter of loss when I have so many other things to live for.

She will always be in my heart and I will always acknowledge her as my daughter however until she is old enough to make the decision, I need to let go. Her adopters are in control of all of this and as hateful and cruel as they are, I am not interested in playing this game with them. I deserve to be happy. I did not give my child away and I will not submit myself to this chained life any longer.

Update of the meeting and the next chapter, if any, will follow next week. Thank you to all who have been so very supportive in my journey and to those I have come to know so well even if only through the internet. All of you have helped me in more ways than you will ever know and I feel it is important to let you know this.

Love Myst xxx

Latest news...

2011-04-22T14:40:00.001+10:00

A quick update!

So... I checked my email on Monday morning not expecting to hear back however Mr X had already left me a quick response to say they would get back to me and "obviously we'll work this out".

For that day I was very positive and felt this was a good response but I decided to wait because I have been in this position before. In fact, this week was not unlike the week I sent them the letter to confirm I still wanted her back all those years ago and we faced an agonising ten day period waiting for them to send the letter they sent which told me they were not giving her back despite they had committed to doing this prior the signing etc.

(Quick background: I did not want to sign consent and had called the adoption off; in a meeting with the then PAP's I told them of my decision, they told me I was their only chance, I felt bad so we agreed to a three day 'trial' period where I would sign consent and if at the end of those three days I still wanted her I would have her back or would allow the adoption to proceed. I was NOT told of my legal rights which were none and that once signed there was NO revocation period. At the end of the three day period, as arranged, my mum told them I wanted her back and I sent them a letter to confirm this. They rejected it and decided to keep her anyway which I suspect they had already decided to do and the three day trial was just a trick to get me to sign. We went to court, I won. They took me back to court and in a case which long since puzzled me, I lost. Only the year before last did I find out it was dodgy although I suspected it all along, and I should never have lost but actually, should have won.)

Anyway, late yesterday afternoon, I received another email asking for a meeting like the one we had 18 months ago in which I had asked for sleepovers at my parents house for my younger daughter (Noodle) and Amber. These were quickly denied and a story of how she could be at risk of being sexually abused by any male (including my 2 year old son) if she stayed with us was concocted and was the reason given. Needless to say my dad and hubby were highly insulted. I had intended back then to broach the issue of visits without them but the smug attitudes they had and something he said to me just put me off.

So this time, the meeting will be about what we can do going forward. I know this will be their chance to talk me out of this idea of visits without them but I am a different person to the person I was on 2009 and I will not be so easily rail roaded. It will be an intresting day! I will update once I know what is happening which won't be until at least the end of May at this point.

A massive thank you to everyone who has supported me both here and though Facebook and email. I just want you all to know it is really valued and treasured.

Taking back my Power.... round 2

2011-04-18T00:07:00.004+10:00

A couple of years ago I wrote a post titled "Taking back my Power" and when I came to blog tonight, I decided that is again exactly what I have done in a completely different way.

In our lives, we all have fears... heights, spiders, dirt, speech-making etc (and most of these I have as well!!) but one of my BIGGEST fears in the last 13 years, is standing tall and putting my foot down when it comes to my girl. Fear because I know in standing up and putting that foot down I know so well it could cost me so much and the pain that cost causes has me fearing in a totally paralysing way.

So today, I faced that fear.

As I posted a few weeks ago, I had a visit approaching. That visit was supposed to be today however was cancelled yesterday on account of my daughter having an illness. Yes, part of me has wondered how true that was but I do think she was sick. And the thought of that was enough to anger me yesterday because hearing that she is sick (nothing serious) and knowing she has probably been sick many times in the past 13 odd years and I have not been present for those years rubs in just some of what it is that has been lost. However I digress.

After reading a few blogs this weekend, two by other mothers and one from an adoptive mother I love and respect (yes, shock horror, I DID say that!) and an email from another mum friend, I came to the conclusion it was time to speak my mind about the visits we were having. When I received the text about my daughter, her adoptive 'father' suggested I email next week to reorganise another visit. I decided now was my time to take back some of the power I had lost all those years ago and let them know it was time for us to get to know Amber without them; i.e. have visits without them.

I am under no illusion they will allow this. In fact I know they probably won't given the way they have dictated the way the visits will work until now but I am no longer comfortable with keeping my mouth closed and ignoring the proverbial white elephant in the middle of the room.

I will include the text of the email below. Before anyone decides to comment however, I would suggest if you don't know my story or my situation you refrain if you cannot add anything positive or helpful. I share so those I have gotten to know and love can know what is going on, not to be told what to do or how to do it. The email is sent now so there is nothing that can be done about it even if you did want to persuade me not to.

Email:

Hi X,

Thanks for getting back to me about Amber’s illness. I hope she feels better soon and can enjoy the rest of the school holidays.

I was thinking maybe the 1st of May for the reschedule if Easter weekend is out. Or even the couple of days after the weekend like Monday or Tuesday as they are public holidays? Just my thoughts anyway.

I guess I should be honest with you about where I am at with visits. Personally I feel it is time Amber was able to come to us on her own. I understand why you don’t want her to however I would never do anything to hurt her or upset her so I don’t think your fears are necessary. She is now 13 years old; at that age I was looking after people’s children on my own in a different country and was a lot more independent than Amber is. I am not comfortable in our current arrangement and cannot relate to her with you and xxx there given our history.

I have played ‘the game’ for almost ten years now but honestly, what happened to take Amber from me will never go away or be forgiven. It can’t be; its just too big. What happened to me in losing Amber almost destroyed me and has robbed me of a lot of living. Adoption is not a beautiful thing; it destroys families and I am not the only one who says this.

Despite this and how I feel, I have done my best. My intention with wanting visits with just her is to get to know her. Nothing sinister. Currently I feel she doesn’t open up because she feels the tension. If she had the chance just to be without worrying where everyone is at, then I think we would all be much more comfortable. I get what I have told you will not be welcome, however I need to be honest. You are not the only considerations in this; it affects all my children; all three of them and my parents.

I know I risk losing all chance to see her after this. I am fine with that because I am no longer a willing participant in playing happy families and if that is the price of honesty, then that is the price I pay. I want to get to know my daughter for who she is without all the pressure and I don’t ask all that much really. I am not holding my breath however but leaving it with you.

Cheers,

(Myst)

In sending this email, it represents so much to me about how far I have come. I realised today I have been allowing them to continue holding all the cards in the last few years by dictating how often and the terms of these visits. Every visit has involved a lengthy preparation time; a steeling of seeing my daughter's adopters and pretending as if everything is okay. My daughter and I barely talk and we have a fairly miserable time. I have asked her if she likes the visits and she has assured me she does and yet they are so painful and as we have no real time together I feel they are a waste of time. I feel if she didn't have to worry about them standing over her, she could relax a little and we could just get to know each other. It isn't like she is a little girl anymore. I can understand why they had to be there when she was younger but not after 9 odd years of visits. It is hardly as if we are going to take her and run!

Anyway, I know not what this will bring me and I am not sure I care all that much. Of course if they cut off all contact and visits with me I will be upset but then it isn't something I haven't experienced from them before. However this time I have the evidence to support me for the day she wants to know why and also they would have to explain to her why they are no longer allowing visits to continue.

All I know is I have been honest and true to myself and all my children. I mentioned in a previous post last year I want to be authentic and finally I feel I have been in terms of these visits.

So tonight, for the first time in many, many years, I go to bed a free woman. Free from the chains of an open adoption which has never really been all that open. Free from the games they have forced us to play. Free from them using my girl against me and holding her over me. I am her mother, she is my daughter and I will not allow my family to be used like this anymore. I have told her I love her and I will always be there for her. There is no more I can do as it is out of my hands due to adoption.

I. am. Free.

Do people even know what they are talking about...

2011-04-14T10:07:00.007+10:00

... when they jump on their high and mighty horse and shout about "women's rights"?? Do people even know what a right is today? From the hoopla I have seen in the last few years, I would say not.

Reproductive rights, rights for criminals, rights to do this, that or the other yada yada yada. To be honest I am SICK of it because these things have NOTHING to do with REAL rights; the basic right to be alive.

Reproductive rights... see I never really got this one. Today it seems to be about all sorts of things that have NOTHING to do with the original movement. Now adoption has been thrown in as well as people of same sex relationships declaring they have a right to have a child (which they don't if it involves someone outside of them, which of course it will). Newsflash people: If you cannot have a baby, YOU DON'T HAVE A RIGHT TO SOMEONE ELSE'S. You can dress this up any which way you choose but you don't have a RIGHT to a child just because you WANT one. This is where I see rights and wants blurring the lines; the West has become very good at this. Adoption is NOT a reproductive right. It has nothing to do with it actually because adoption involves more than the couple in question; it involves a whole other party including their family trees.

You know, all of you people harping on about how bad your life is because of what you can't get in your life, I have a suggestion for you... especially those of you who claim to be "christian". Sell your big fancy homes, your possessions and go live in a developing country. See how the other half of the world lives. Don't visit them, LIVE with them. Experience their life in their way (not by having a flash house/apartment on the outskirts of poverty stricken areas). Maybe then you will see the reality between what people in the West see as a "right" and what REAL human rights issues are.

I read and hear daily of this and that right being denied and I really shake my head in wonder. Most people I know have no CLUE what it is like to have their rights truly taken away.

As a young teen, my family lived in Cairo, Egypt which is an Islamic nation. My father who has always had a love for languages decided he wanted to study Arabic and my parents wanted to see what Islam was truly like. It was a great experience for all of us if not somewhat difficult. We didn't live like the other westerners (predominantly Americans and Brits) did; we lived with the people, got to know the language and saw first hand REAL human rights issues. Do these women who fight for so called "Women's rights" in Western nations have any real clue what they are fighting for? We already have the vote, equal pay is still an issue but it isn't nearly as bad as it was many years ago, women are becoming more and more visible in politics (My country had a female Prime Minister years ago and now the country I reside in has a female PM), in business etc. I would say the hard work has been done and I salute the women from my homeland for giving women all over the world the chance to stand up and be counted. But now, what is it we are fighting for?

I am not forced night after night to submit myself for sex, I have a right to report abuse to the police and be listened to, if I ran away from my husband with my children due to abuse (in most cases) I would be protected. I can have as many children as I want and do not have to fear a forced abortion if I get pregnant again. I married who I wanted to, not someone I was forced to. I can vote, work, basically do what I want withing legal reason. Sounds to me I have as many rights as I want really. But the women in other nations (especially the Middle East) do not have the same rights I do although some do great PR at making it look like they do. Female circumcision is still widely practised in these countries. Paedophilia is not only encouraged, it is legally allowed in the form of child brides; some as young as 11. Girls are not encouraged to have an education and many give up school young to ready themselves for arranged marriages; sometimes to men as old as 80.

So looking at their lives in comparison to ours, we really have nothing to complain about. Sometimes I feel we have it so good in the Western world we have to SEARCH for problems because people cannot just be happy for their lives.

Today it is acceptable to make another person suffer to get what you want. In fact I would say some people are so wrapped in voicing their rights about what they WANT they are actually ignring the fact they are denying others their rights; like what happens in adoption.

If anything in the west, I would say one of the last remaining REAL human rights issues we have is the blatant abuse of human rights in adoption. Women who are being treated like disposable uterus' for those who are exerting their right to have a child at whatever cost. Children and adults who are being denied their rights to their own family trees because they are being denied the very basic of all documents: their own BIRTH certificate.

If women want to fight for something good, then they can fight to cease adoption as we know it and for a system that only provides care for the children who actually need it. There are sadly children langusihing in our foster care systems who need homes and yet people are more invested in ensuring the removal of womb-fresh infants from their mothers so they can get some experience they feel they have a "right" to.

To lay it out simply: people who are infertile or who cannot have a child for one reason or another (or who do not want to have their own child) have NO rights to a child. Your rights are as follows: you have the right to seek medical attention to look at your issues, you have the right to rant, vent and scream about your loss, you have the right to WANT a child. But you do NOT have the right to another mother's child. You do not have the right to expect to adopt. When want you want involves another family to become involved then you are involving the rights of THOSE people and thus no longer have the rights to dictate what you want (however this has not stopped many, many adopters and paps hence the many closed "open" adoptions).

Its like criminals who demand rights. Sorry but if your murder, rape or rob another person you give up your rights then and there. If you chose to take the rights of another person to parent, live or be safe within their own home your rights are cancelled in the eyes of real justice (usually not dealt out in the so called Justice systems of today). Too bad the legal system and society are so blind they cannot see the natural consequences for these people.

So in concluding this post, before so called "rights" movements want to jump up and down about what they want, please go get some perspective. Find out what real rights abuses are. Every now and again we'll hear stories that are truly about human rights abuses. Over the weekend I saw a film which was apparently released in 2006 however has only just hit the DVD stores here in Australia. It is called Border Town and it focuses on the rapes and murders of thousands of women in the border town of Juarez, Mexico. While it is definitely Hollywoodised, it brings to light some REAL issues that need to be looked into. This is just one issue and one movie; there are many like it and yet I see very few people doing much about these real issues and yet when it comes to things like countries shutting their doors for Americans to adopt, I see much outcry and political involvment. Just shows me the issue of Human Rights today is really only another way people use to get something they want and not much else. God forbid anything happen to you to deny you your real rights and karma comes and bites you in the backside.

ETA: Wanted to add, I am a HUGE supporter of Human Rights movements and in the past have always supported women's rights however until I see a return to REAL issues, I do not see a point in supporting Women's rights movements. Anyone who uses Women's Rights to get what they want are missing the point of having rights! The issues of sexual discrimination in the work place, sexual harrassment etc are HUMAN issues, as in behavioural issues and do not, in my opinion fall under equal rights etc as men can also endure these issues. At the end of the day, I feel men and women are both equal as they are both human however both have different 'gifts' and purposes. I feel that women are better at some things whilst men are better at other things. That does not mean women and men have their place, not at all; merely a recognition fo each sex for their select abilities.

ETA 2: This post is not really aimed to cover the issues around abuse of human rights in adoption or women's rights in general. As a woman, I have many rights except it would seem when I am easy prey for other's wants. Yes my rights and that of my child were robbed from us in what happened to us however my aim with this post was not to focus on that however to focus on the fact many people in Western society really have no idea what rights are until they have had theirs robbed from them. For me, the theft of my child wasn't the first instance of human rights abuses (albeit the worst) but the fourth but I am not going into that here. And yes, I am "pissy" (mad, annoyed, frustrated) today.

Another visit...

2011-03-25T12:39:00.028+11:00

We have another visit coming up. I have no idea how this will go. Probably like always, it will be a waste of time where she and I get no time together and it will, like always be all about her adopters feeling like they are doing the "right" thing and we will have to listen to them drone on and on about their pathetic lives (really they are so boring and wrapped in themselves it is painful to listen to them)

Now though, I have the visits, make it clear to them I am not comfortable seeing them while at the same time I am comfortable with seeing my daughter. She is of an age where she could easily come to see us without them. We are hardly going to 'kidnap' her! (Please explain how kidnapping one's own child is a crime?)

My mum would love to take her shopping, to the movies, out for 'coffee' (hot chocolate in Amber's case!). I would love to just lounge on the bed with her and chat... we clearly have that in common! Will just have to hold on to 'one day'.

I really cannot wait until she is old enough to tell us all what she would like. She has already said she would like to catch a movie with me... but I am not sure how she feels about the whole situation. Ever since she was eight and there was "fallout" from a certain visit, she has not been allowed to breathe a word about her adoption to me. From her pained expressions and a look in her eyes that tells me she has many questions, I can tell the silence is not voluntary. I hope she, at some point, tells them where to go.

I know some people who will read this and think "how dare you" about what I say about my daughter's adopters but really, how do I dare NOT to?? At the end of the day, what happened was wrong and these farcical visits to make them feel better about themselves are just an extension of what they lust after. They don't really and have never cared about my daughter. If they did, they would never have taken her, lied on oath and basically done what they could to appropriate my daughter for themselves. No, that is not love. And now, if they cared, she would be able to come to us whenever she liked; for sleepovers, outings, birthdays etc WITHOUT them breathing down her or our necks. No, they don't care about anyone but themselves and how THEY look and feel about everything.

So to me, visits are a waste of time except for the one fact that I am letting her know I want to see her. Many times I have made it clear that I would see her more often; that this is all out of my hands. You know, unless I arrange it, there is never any visit. It is all up to me to email her adopter male, never once have they approached US unless it was to reschedule a visit they cancelled in the first place. No, they have never reached out and tried to bring our families closer and through that I can see they don't care or love my daughter because if they did, they would want to bring us all together.

I am at the point where I almost don't care about visits. She knows I will see her whenever. I have told her that. She knows she is welcome in my home whenever she wants, I have also told her that too. But I am sick of the games, sick of the lies and sick of ignoring the giant elephant in the middle of the room... which I am sure is also sick of just standing there and would dearly love to smack us all with its trunk and tell us to just sort it out already!

So much for this thing called 'open' adoption. It really was all just a giant lie and I know it is because I have lived it. Yeah, I also know there are supposed stories of 'successful' open adoptions however I doubt the success of these in truth given neither party is actually honest about how they really feel and are living behind a wall of lies. Ugh, I detest shallow fronts. I prefer to live my life more authentically so to go around smiling and pretending to be happy about something that has ripped my soul apart doesn't sit well with me.

My sister once said something that still resonates with me. She said people like happy endings. Its so true! The general public/society like a happy ending because they don't like to be uncomfortable. They don't want to face REAL issues and they want to go on pretending life is all one big "happy, happy, happy, joy, joy, joy" and beware anyone who doesn't conform to this. Hence why you have all these new mothers who deny their true feelings (so much they believe in the lie) and "happily" give their children up. It is just so unnatural.

So that is what is happening for us... visit soon with same old, same old. I'll be twiddling my thumbs as usual and waiting for the day my girl is old enough to decide what she wants for herself.

Soundtracks of life

2011-03-25T10:19:00.003+11:00

As I was sitting at my desk working (I work from home), I was listening to a playlist made up of all my favourite songs from over the years and it came to a certain group of songs popular during the time I was pregnant with Amber/during the time I lost her and my heart almost stopped.

As I relived certain painful aspects, I also relived other memories from that time which were not painful.

This led me to thinking about how powerful and healing music is and I know I am not the only one who feels this way. Music has the ability to hold you transfixed as memories emerge of times long past or still present. It is almost like our silent voice; through our music we can express how we feel, where we are at, what we are experiencing. There are many songs that will catapult me back in time... whether I am a nine year old standing in a mall in Manila or going to school in Cairo or back home in New Zealand or the morning of my wedding or during the subsequent days of the birth of each of my children.

I adore music. To be honest, of all things therapeutic in my life, I feel music has been the most healing. So I wanted to ask you my readers, how music has or has not impacted on your life?

For something different, I also want to share the songs that got me through the terrible days of Amber's loss. There are many sad songs but there are happy ones (ahem, I was 20 and loved dance music - as a way of explanation of music choice back then!) and the happy ones are those I am sharing here:

AQUA and everything AQUA eg:

Barbie Girl (hated it when it first came out but I heard it so much it started my addiction to all Aqua songs; plus they were very popular in the clubs I went to)
Dr Jones
Roses are Red
Happy Boys and Happy Girls (strangely this song was very helpful when I was hitting rock bottom; maybe the whole positive thinking thing)

and then there was
911 - Body Shakin' (hahahaha)
Backstreet's back - Backstreet Boys (I had a mad crush on Kevin and wanted to marry him one day lol)
Spice Girls
Amber - This is your night
Romy and Michelle's High school reunion soundtrack
Bon Jovi - myriad of songs
Chumbawumba - Tubthumping
Gina G - Ohh a just a little bit
Crush - Jelly Head
La Bouche - Be my lover
Koko - Open your eyes
Rythm is a Dancer - La Bouche
Slave to the Music - Twenty 4 Seven (?)
Break my Stride - Unique II

and the list could go on forever...

These were the songs that pushed me through another day. What about you? Do you have any songs you remember just loving because of the positive feeling they gave you? I know we all have a playlist we listen to when we are sad or at rock bottom... and sadly my playlist for thaose emotions is probably quadruple the length of this one (so forever x 4 ;) ) however, listening to these songs today gave me a glimpse into a past where I enjoyed myself and was at peace inside myself regardless of what the world was doing. Sometimes we all need these moments and I am grateful for this music for giving those. Because normally when I look back, it is diffcult to go beyond the intense wall of pain and anguish. However, those connections to the happiness of once upon a time are what I need to build a better future and look forward. There will always be pain. I have no choice about that one (although I know some people won't believe that) because adoption is in my life and like I said, it truly did fracture me to my core. But I will still fight to be happy and have a life. Because I deserve it, my children deserve it, my husband and my family deserve it... and one day, when/or if she decides to returns to me, Amber deserves it too.

Adoption Sucks

2011-03-07T20:17:00.000+11:00

Really, it does. Sucks life, joy, energy and love from this world. Really if anyone thought it was anything but destructive then they would be living in a lovely shallow world which denies emotion and the damage to one's soul. Gee, must be swell living in denial.

So yeah, adoption sucks and that is all I have to say about that.

All my love to my beautiful home of Christchurch xxx

2011-02-23T17:11:00.002+11:00

In memory of all those who have been killed in the earthquake that hit Christchurch, New Zealand on February 22, 2011. My heart goes out to your families. And to all those who have suffered, I am terribly sorry.

To my beautiful home city whom I was hoping to move back to... I am gutted. Simply put. So many buildings have been forever damaged and gone... the face of Christchurch has been forever changed, taking with them so many memories. Christchurch will eventually rebuild however this will take a long, long time. I am proud of my city; she has been through so much. I don't know many cities in the world that withstand quite as many quakes:

A 7.1 magnitude hit on September 4
4500 aftershocks varying from 3 - 5.9 in magnitude, some with depths of only 3km, have hit in the last 5-6 months
6.3 hit on February 22 followed closely by another at 5.7

This city was not hit by a one off quake which took it down. No, she stood bravely for 6 months while her foundations were shaken to their core. She deserves the credit for holding out for so very, very long. And the people of Christchurch have done an amazing job of getting right into the job of rescuing people. Yes, a dark, dark day but New Zealand can be proud of their citizens from the Garden city. They are indeed survivors.

It still hurts...

2011-02-15T18:03:00.000+11:00

My blog has been fairly infrequent of late. There is so much swimming around in my head; posts I have written in my mind already, topics I want to nut out and yet when I come to sit at my keyboard, I just stare at the screen and my mind empties of what I had to say.

Even now, all my ideas have gone.

Only one thing remains. And that is the all consuming knowledge that in just two days time, I will be the mother of a teenager.

My precious, tiny, baby girl will be a teenager.

Never did I think I would make it to now. Indeed, it is a miracle I made it through the first 3 months after my daughter was pried from my fingers and I was left as nothing on the floor of someone's kitchen.

When the light had been taken from my world, I stumbled second to second, minute to minute. Over time, I still stumbled, tripping my way through each hour, the screaming still in my head; the mess of my bleeding heart trailing behind me.

Hours turned to days and then slowly, very slowly, those days turned to weeks, then months and years. I managed to stop the flow of blood and patch myself up. I found a mask that worked and started living again.

But under my mask, under the facade facing the rest of the world, I hold my heart together. Every now and again, on certain days or at certain times the bleeding starts anew. Fresh, dark, life blood which I desperately try to stem.

Her birthday is one of those days.

I have heard and I have been told many adopted children and adults hate their birthdays. I often wonder how Amber feels about hers. If she realises that across the city there is a house with a candle burning for her from morning to night's end. That there is a family singing Happy Birthday to a photo of her, a sister who blows out her candles that she should be blowing out. And how they all sit in silence while they eat a cake she should be there to eat. I wonder if she realises there is a woman sitting in that house silently screaming, missing her, aching to hold her, to just see her on this day of all days. That her Mother is wrapping her empty arms around herself instead of her.

I wonder if she thinks of her actual birth day. Her birth day all those years ago was not without its own pain. A sick little girl, I was told they would know by the end of the day whether or not she would make it. She did but to face her loss even then was harrowing and because of this impending loss, I was unable to hold her until the next day. I touched her though and I can still smell that NICU room, see it as it was all those years ago.

Thirteen years. They have been the hardest years of my life. They would have been the worst however getting married and having two more precious children have enriched my life in ways I could never imagine. They help me through these days and I am sure my Noodle girl will again be my little champion on Thursday with her compassionate spirit. She just knows, I don't even have to tell her.

I wish though, on Thursday, there was a different scenario to the one playing out. I wish we could all be together as a family. My greatest wish is what so many people take for granted or as evidenced in the adoption world, feel entitled to.

But really it shouldn't be a wish. It should be my reality. But it isn't and never will be. This birthday marks another year lost, another birthday lost. No matter how positive one tries to be about this situation or choses to see it, loss remains. So while her adopters celebrate their gain on my daughter's birthday, I will be mourning her loss. A hurt that will never go away because it has cut too deep and has fractured me to my core.

Abduction and Adoption

2011-02-12T12:54:00.003+11:00

There has been a really interesting discussion about these two subjects over the last couple of days and I have been involved in it however it is a subject I feel rather passionate about and so I am moving my side of it here.

Abduction means to carry off another by force. How could this possibly be related to adoption where supposedly adoption is where choices are made and therefore no force is necessary?

Well, you see, adoption is NEVER as it appears. Most of us who have lived its horror know this first hand. Yes there are disillusioned women who abandon their babies seemingly easily and some adopted adults who do not feel they can delve into their issues for fear of betraying their adoptive families but on the most part, the more people I meet connected to adoption, the more I find people who have been damaged by it; even those who swear black and blue and red all over that it hasn't.

So, given adoption is not all it seems, where does abduction fit into the grand scheme of things? This is a very complex and multi faceted topic and I am sure I will not be able to do it justice in this post so I will skim for the most part.

I am sure many of the mothers from the era between 1950 - 1980 from varying western countries around the globe can testify to the fact they felt their children were abducted. Some who were tied to their beds, held down by force and drugged to their eyeballs were never allowed to see their babies.

Taken from the moment of birth, many mothers from this era never saw their children again as they were taken from them and given to couples in the closed adoption era. These situations involved force. They involved the taking of a child.

These mothers had no idea where their children were for years and some learned their children had been abused, killed or had died. The trauma for these mothers was incredible. And yet, YET people chose to see these things as a choice. How can they be a choice? How can anyone with a clear conscience and the knowledge of right and wrong SEE this as a choice? It wasn't. It was abduction, only this time it was done by the hospitals, agencies and governments. Abduction, yes, that is right, kidnap. And yet in the hypocrisy that IS adoption, these mothers, instead of being given the support afforded to mothers and family members of socially accepted cases of abduction, were shunned and treated as gutter rats. And now, when they try to speak out, they are told they were given a choice and hindsight etc is an easy way out so they do not have to accept responsibility. People really are cruel.

However adoption didn't cease its evils here. Instead, the industry learned from this era and realised they had to become more cunning, sneaky. They had to invent new ways to manipulate a child from his/her mother's arms given the outright taking of a mother's child from the delivery table was beginning to arouse suspicion and was seen as an overly heavy route to take. (Um, try illegal and cruel).

So these very cunning agencies and persons came up with 'open' adoption and the various coercive methods practised today and as such, out of these situations have come some horrific stories of how children have been literally TAKEN from their mothers' arms with the law on the side of the abductors. And it is not just in adoption this happens. It occurs within social services when social workers take a baby from families for no real reason but with fabricated stories, because there are adoption numbers to be filled.

For me, I see my daughter as being taken from me. I won her back. She was my daughter under the law. And yet, because her adopters couldn't accept she wasn't really theirs, took me back to court and magically, (because I would have won easily had this not happened), the judge on the case was removed and replaced by a semi retired judge who made sure my daughter was taken from me. I have since learned that what happened in my case was not regular and the corruption went very high indeed. So my daughter was TAKEN with the law on the side of her abducters because I sure as hell didn't consent to it that second time around!

And then my dear friend KiwiRose, who recently ended her life because she could no longer bear the pain, also had her child taken through similar measures. Her case is another highly questionable one. And still we are told it was our "choice". Sorry to those who need to believe that it was that, but it was never our choice. Our children were taken and then for some time, I had no idea where my child was, how she was or if she was alive. Those years were thankfully short but hell. When my daughter was taken from me, she was pried out of my arms. I didn't just let her go. She was physically dragged, taken, from me, her mother and given to strangers. What I experienced was an abduction of sorts. The only difference was, is I knew who her captors were and the law was on their side because this abduction was sanctioned by the law of adoption.

I wish my story and the story of KiwiRose were isolated incidents. However they are not and sadly this happens internationally; in both western and eastern parts of the world. No mother is immune.

But if you do experience this, you will also experience the shunning of society. The refusal to listen to your story, to be treated as a human being whose rights have been violated. You will be ridiculed, even by other "mothers" in the adoption community who chose to abandon their chilren for whatever reason. Because THEY made the choice willingly, they will try to shut you down because they have no clue as to what you are going through. You will be labelled as crazy, and they will try to make you feel isolated by telling you that no one else views your situation this way or that you are alone in what you know about adoption. At the end of the day, only YOU can know what happened and it is up to you to tell your story. Don't listen to those who label you because they do it out of fear and a need to shut down the truth because it doesn't apply to them.

So yes, I am saying there are many similarities between adoption and abduction and that in some cases, they are the same. Obviously not in all cases i.e. those who are proud to brag about giving away their children and celebrate being called "birth" mothers (Shudder) Their stories are plain out about adoption and its sicker side.

I have only spoken about the view from the mother's side of things (in certain cases, not all, obviously) and I cannot speak for those who were adopted given I haven't been adopted. Their stories may completely conflict with ours and that is okay. Because that is their experience. But that does not mean our story is wrong or invalid.

I am sure this post will anger/upset people or whatever. That is okay too. But I will not be dictated to by those who do not want to accept what happened to me. It happened. Get used to me speaking up about it. How else are people supposed to get justice or prevent the same or similar incidents from happening to others if we all cower because of those who cannot handle the truth? I don't speak out to intentionally upset or anger people but I know it happens. Tough. I am in this situation today because too many women were afraid to speak up. It isn't their fault. It is what happens when evil people let power go to their heads and opress others. Well this is one mother who is not letting those who like to dictate and threaten quieten me. My voice was drowned once and my child was taken/stolen/abducted from me and so I will make sure I scream my story if I have to.

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ETA: I did want to say that mothers who experience this through adoption do have a different experience of what a mother goes through when her child goes missing in the typical situation of abduction and thus an investigation starts into what happened. The details are different and this is the view of an abduction society holds in its head.

But the removal of a child without the mother's consent and in horrific circumstances is really no different. We both feel at a loss, powerless, helpless, angry, scared, anguished, traumatised. While the situation is different, we come to the same or similar emotions and THAT is what I am talking about: the experience of it.

A mother placing her child for adoption with a clear intent and informed choice does not feel the same way because to her, this is something she has chosen to do. But a mother who decides to parent her own child but then has that child taken through underhanded measures faces an entirely different situation and thus for her the experience is completely different.

My intention with this post is not by any means to trivialise the pain suffered by mothers and families of children who are abducted in the mainstream sense. Indeed there are cases where abduction and adoption take drastically different turns, for example in the cases where children/young people are taken and murdered or never seen or heard from again. I am by no means including myself in this light. What I am talking about is the way in which our children are taken in the first instance and the experience of that. What happens AFTER this first instance is different in each case.

I have known a girl who was abducted/kidnapped and then most likely murdered. Her story remains one of New Zealand's greatest unsolved crimes. Her mother was a great support for me after I lost my daughter. She understood how I felt and was one of the very first people to give me a voice. Despite our stories being vastly different, she recognised my experience was similar in some ways to what she went through. And she validated my experience. I will never forget her and always feel grateful to her for giving me that gift.

Yes, I see abduction and adoption being the same in some instances but I am not naiive enough to say they are always the same. Stealing a child is abduction. And this happens for a myriad of twisted reasons. Arguing about what makes a person's experience valid or invalid is entirely unhelpful. The only thing you can do is stop this abuse against all mothers and their children.

Another must read post...

2011-01-27T16:46:00.000+11:00

Okay, so no I am not only going to be reposting other people's blogs from now on; however I REALLY want my readers to see this post from Jeni. As much as we mothers can say adoption hurts from our point of view, no one can say it better than those who were and are adopted. The ones that know and have known from birth what this social institution is like. They are the voice we should be listening to and just because often this voice might be laced with anger which stems from deep, deep hurt and anger at injustice, it is a voice that should NEVER, EVER be dismissed.

"it bites"

Love you Jeni xxx

(Oh and happy 100 posts to me!)

Must read post

2011-01-22T17:55:00.000+11:00

Just love this post by Cassi. In fact I love most posts by Cassi ;)

A Rose Taken

2011-01-19T18:18:00.002+11:00

As many of you are aware, my friend Kristy also known as nzrose and Rose Taken passed away last Sunday. In her memory and the memory of those who have died directly due to the results of adoption, I have set up a memorial page on Facebook.

Please be aware it is a Memorial page and is there for those who are grieving as a result of their loss. I understand this is a very touchy topic and I am aware many feel suicide is selfish or a cowardly way out. I feel this is because those who feel this do not understand what it is like to be at the point of wanting the pain to end so much that there is a drive to end your own life. I get this pain having been there myself for a long time after I lost Amber. Thankfully I beat that curse but some do not and they need to be remembered for the people they were and not what they did.

A Rose Taken

If you have known someone who has passed away as a result of adoption trauma, please become a fan and add their name to the list in the Discussions under "In Memory of..." I hope we can give our friends, family members and loved ones a page where they can be remembered without stigma attached.

For you Kristy, wherever you are xxx

Just editing to add I have noticed an increase of people searching for her blog so I am placing the link for it here

Missing...

2011-01-18T00:53:00.003+11:00

I think this songs pretty much sums it up. Too much, so close. This monster knows how to twist the handle of the blade embedded in my heart and I can't handle this pain. My arms have been cut free for 6 or 7 years... and now I can no longer resist the urge to see the blood, to feel pain; real pain. Its all too much. Too much destruction and those out there who want to keep this monster going... you are no better than murderers, cheaters, CRIMINALS. Anyone who wants/desires to partake in this world of adoption that KILLS mothers and their children - you are scum.

Adoption is wrong. Anyone who cannot see through all the lies is blind by choice and your choices are hurting others. Its the same as supporting a rapist you know is going to rape again. Shame on you.

Missing
by Evanescence

Please, please forgive me,
But I won't be home again.
Maybe someday you'll look up,
And, barely conscious, you'll say to no one:
"Isn't something missing?"

You won't cry for my absence, I know -
You forgot me long ago.
Am I that unimportant...?
Am I so insignificant...?
Isn't something missing?
Isn't someone missing me?

Even though I'm the sacrifice,
You won't try for me, not now.
Though I'd die to know you love me,
I'm all alone.
Isn't someone missing me?

Please, please forgive me,
But I won't be home again.
I know what you do to yourself,
I breathe deep and cry out,
"Isn't something missing?
Isn't someone missing me?"

And if I bleed, I'll bleed,
Knowing you don't care.
And if I sleep just to dream of you
I'll wake without you there,
Isn't something missing?
Isn't something...

And the Monster strikes again...

2011-01-11T10:30:00.003+11:00

I really do not know how best to start this post. Perhaps there is no eloquent way to say this so I am just going to get it out.

Yesterday, a friend of mine passed away. At her own hand. We met several years ago and then for a time lost contact and then rediscovered each other only last year. She has been broken ever since she lost her daughter and then, with the passing of her brother only a couple of years later in the same way.

I understand why she did this; oh do I understand that dark, dark place all to well. I just wish with everything in me it didn't end this way. That somehow there had been a light for her in that darkness and eventually she could have come out of it.

To my beautiful friend, who I call my Kiwi Rose,

Rest in Peace beautiful. I am so sorry you were broken like this; that there was no other way you could see through this hell. I am sorry we never got the chance to meet up like we were hoping or do most of the things we had planned. I will miss you; both here in blog land and out in real life.

My heart aches for you, for your daughters and although I know you were not fond of your mum after what happened, my heart aches for your whole family too.

Farewell and may you find that elusive peace you have been after for so long.

With much love always,
Myst xxx

Destiny

2011-01-08T12:20:00.001+11:00

des•ti•ny
n. pl. des•ti•nies
1. The inevitable or necessary fate to which a particular person or thing is destined; one's lot.
2. A predetermined course of events considered as something beyond human power or control: "Marriage and hanging go by destiny" (Robert Burton).
3. The power or agency thought to predetermine events: Destiny brought them together.

I was reading through blogs this morning - as one does - and came across a post which stuck with me. The post referred to destiny and how people view destiny within adoption and this whole concept irks me.

Many people seem to feel there is a destiny for each person. That there is some greater reason why things - both good and bad - happen to people. Some people like to believe God sets their life on a certain course; that He is in control somehow over what happens. In theory, this seems like a lovely idea. Because, somehow, we are all protected and safe etc. But in reality and in practical terms, this notion is a nightmare.

At one point in my religious clouded mind I too believed this. Believed my life was all mapped out and everything would be just fine. How naiive can a person be? Extremely it would seem! Since I have been able to sort God out of all the religious and 'churchian' doctrines, it has dawned on me there really is no such thing as destiny.

We are born and thus begins the greatest journey of all: the journey of our lives. What happens in our lives to us because of our own choices and actions, or as the result of the actions and choices of others, is not due to destiny or some higher purpose. It happens. Because of cause and effect. Whoever created the myth of destiny must have been living in lalaland.

If destiny truly existed, it would negate the message of certain faiths. It would mean there is no such thing as free will and that our whole lives are mapped out before we are born. Which would mean nothing we do will ever matter because destiny has already sentenced us to a pre-determined life. It would also mean there WAS some higher power of some sort holding all the cards. And given the things that happen in life, I would say this higher power was malicious and nothing like the loving God believed in by certain faiths. This higher power therefore would be creating murder, war, disease. You cannot have destiny creating all the good happenings in life if there is no one creating all the evil in life. This just doesn't add up. It seems to me people like to use 'destiny' to justify what they want and do and don't look at the logic of what they are saying.

I feel we live our lives and we deal or must deal with whatever curve ball is thrown at us.

I know for a fact I was never destined to be raped or lose my child. To anyone who holds onto this misguided view of life I say you are a very,VERY disturbed person and should be removed from society. In that same vein, I also know I was not supposed to be sexually molested as a child, that my family were not supposed to go through unbelievable hell in a different country, that family members were not destined to die painfully of cancer.

No, my belief is that what happened to me is the result of others doing what they can to get what they want. And that other things happen because life just happens. Very simple really. There is no great intellect required to know this. Or perhaps there is if so many choose to hang on to some unrealistic ideal of destiny.

In adoption, I have seen many people hang onto a misguided belief that somehow there are children out there who are destined to be adopted. Seriously? If you feel this is true, have you really searched the logic of this idea all the way through? This belief then would mean that whatever higher power you believe in has caused an unplanned pregnancy through whatever way, has caused a mother to lose or place her child to/for adoption and has ignored all the damage adoption causes to children JUST so they can be destined to be adopted. To me, this is the biggest load of rubbish I have ever seen. Adoption is a man made institution that has been appropriated in more recent times to procure children for the needs of those unable to have children. It is not an altruistic institution, nor is love involved. It is all about choices (in adoption most of the time these choices are selfish) and in adoption, most choices that lead to an adoption taking place are NEGATIVE which impact the lives of many people in a traumatic way for the rest of their existence. It might seem like a lovely fairytale to tell a child adopted they were meant to be with their adoptive parents or they were placed in the wrong tummies BUT it just isn't true.

Life is about choices. Chances. Whether they are the choices of others or yourself, your life is ruled by choice and perhaps, chance. No destiny in it. No greater power deeming you worthy or unworthy. Just life. So take it in your hands and do the best you can with it. And remember the choices you make can impact another person in both negative or positive ways depending on what you choose.

Its Christmas time...

2010-12-22T08:57:00.001+11:00

So this is Christmas...

Christmas is always a time that highlights to many mothers and adoptees the loss we live every day. For me it is no different. Most people around me wouldn't realise that as we count down for Christmas day, or as we ready the table for our traditional combined family Lunch, there is always one place setting missing.

Always a ghostly presence, I imagine a different scenario, wonder at how she would have enjoyed spending her Christmas with those she belongs with... rather than those she has ended up with.

I understand it is something I cannot change. However, I will always have these imaginings. For me, I have never seen Amber-Rose as anyone other than my daughter, one of my children, equal in my eyes to her brother and sister. Her absence in my life is not my choice and I mourn for her every single day.

However I have learned not to beat myself up anymore and whilst I carry these wonderings and this pain through my holiday season, I have also learned to survive and enjoy the here and now.

My other children, Noodle and little Dude are beyond exctied. They have counted down each day and cannot wait for Christmas morning. This year, we have a special Christmas because for the first time in five years, our family will almost be complete with the arrival of my sister C and brother in law from London. We have had a few nervous days watching and waiting to see if they would make it but it looks like they will.

So I will have a happy Christmas this year. Yes, Amber will be with me as she has always been and her absence will be felt but I am no longer being held to ransom to this pain. I embrace it and acknowledge it whislt enjoying the good things my life has been blessed with.

To all my friends in blog land, to my readers - all of you regardless of where we sit in this debate, I wish you and your families a very Happy Christmas. I know only to well the pain many of you will be facing and I wish I could help ease it. Please look after yourselves. May 2011 be a year worth remembering for you.

See you around here soon.

With much love,
Myst xxx

Dear Santa...

2010-12-06T11:19:00.000+11:00

As always, my wish list is very short this year. I am sure you have read the same thing so many times over you must know what I am going to write even before you open my letter. It is the same wish I have had since that first Christmas without her in 1998.

For Christmas this year I wish for my family to be complete. I wish for my daughter to be here with me, with us where she was always supposed to be.

This year I add more to this wish and that is I wish this beast known as adoption would keel over and no longer do to other mothers and children what was done to Amber and myself.

Dear Santa, if ever you could bring me anything, it would have to be my daughter. Just so you know, this wish list will never change so you may as well just grant it for me so I don't pester you for the next so many years.

Yours sincerely,
Myst

Pike River Miners

2010-11-25T00:21:00.002+11:00

In honour of the men who died in the recent mine explosion at the Pike River Mine and to their families. Sending out much love, condolences and prayers at this tragic time.

From a fellow Kiwi xxx

(Image courtesy of widescreenwallpapers.org)

New Zealand and adoption

2010-11-21T11:30:00.003+11:00

A while ago now I blogged about the New Zealand Adoption Act 1955.

Since this post, I still encounter people and organisations who refuse to see the truth regarding this Act and whilst actively promoting this institution of loss (aka adoption), they are also actively misleading unsuspecting expectant mothers and others about the truth of OPEN adoption and how it works in New Zealand.

As in the USA, New Zealand purports to practise open adoption. However, also like the USA, this is all a falsehood given our laws do NOT support this. It is merely a method to encourage more mothers to hand over their children. You see, the law itself is governed, dictated if you like, by the Adoption Act. This Act as I have already posted is from 1955 which was during the peak era of adoption; as in the days they literally stole children from their mothers to fulfil the demand for babies and to punish the mothers for daring to be, well, a normal human being!!

Since this era, this Act has not changed. For the sake of repeating myself (it would appear necessary for me to do so given the lack of intelligence and stubborness of certain adopters like those who run certain pro adoption webpages) I will give you the run down of what this really means.

Adoptions in New Zealand are legally closed. There is no legal framework in this country to support an open system. In fact, as far as the law is concerned, adoption is pratically the same now as it was 55 years ago! The term "open" adoption is merely just that; a term. To enter into an open adoption agreement, the two parties discuss what they would like i.e. visits, letters, photos etc and then the parties sign a piece of paper which outlines this discussion and it is placed on the Social Department's file for that case. And you know what? It means absoultely nothing. It carries no weight. When the adopters have claimed the child and decide they don't want to honour their verbal agreement and empty promises, there is nothing in the Law to prevent them from completely closing the adoption. I know this because it happened to me when I first lost my child and I have heard from other mothers who this has happened to.

I recently contacted a certain pro-adoption website based in (Christchurch) New Zealand regarding the information they have on their website about Open Adoptions, alerting them to the fact their information is indeed incorrect. They seem to believe that because they "know" some people who have "successful" "open" adoptions then open adoption is alive and well. Not true. They seem to feel they can speak for the law. Again, not true. An article in the "Sunday Star Times" a couple of months ago also claimed New Zealand has moved with the times in terms of adoption; that it has embraced 'openness' and moved away from the closed system.

Again though, while it might sound good on paper, this is again just 'wishful' thinking. These people who continually claim New Zealand's adoption system operates with a scheme that is not legal are dangerous.

If you are a mother facing an unplanned pregnancy in New Zealand and you are expoloring your options please do not be fooled by wolves dressed in sheep's clothing. As a young, scared and vulnerable mother, I approached a woman in a crisis pregnancy centre for help. At this point, I wanted and intended to raise my baby, as is natural. Adoption had not entered my head. This so called counsellor was the first to suggest adoption to me. But she did not stop there. An adopter herself, her agenda became clear after the damage had been done. She started on me with threats of losing my daughter very early in the piece; in fact barely days after I discovered I was pregnant and facing anger from my family, in the middle of a real crisis, I turned to her for help. I was terrified. And she saw this as an opportunity to pounce and work me over.

If you are wondering what your options are, please do not look at adoption. If you do decide to go this route (which for your child is the wrong option), please be aware that until our Act changes to be updated with current 'views', open adoption does not actually exist in New Zealand. Yes, sure you will be told it does and my warnings will be dismissed however, please be aware that legally, you do not have the right to have contact with your child, the child you carried and loved, once the adoption is done. Actually, the minute you sign a consent form, your child will be as if you had never known him or her. Adoption is a legal guillotine that severs you from your child and your child from you. There is no revocation period in New Zealand law. And if you are coerced into signing that piece of paper which is very possible given certain agendas, it will be sadly, your tough luck. Because the law relies on the Act at the end of the day despite the knowledge that adoption is not in a child's best interests OR welfare.

Your child's birth certificate, the one they are born with, will be locked away and a new one will be penned listing the adopters as YOUR child's original parents; as if THEY had given birth to them. From now on, in the eyes of the law, you will be a stranger to him or her. Adoption brutally strips all past, history and identity from a person. These are the facts you will not be told. The facts no one wants you to know.

Adoption is not a fairy tale. It is not a happy ever after story. It is a manipulation of nature. Nature did not create adoption. It is an institution created by man to get what he wanted. Some misinformed people think that because adoption was practised in ancient days this makes it okay. This has to be some of the dumbest logic around because slavery was also practised in ancient times and this was eventually outlawed relatively recently. So no, just because the ancient civilisations practiced a form of adoption (not even the current barbaric form of infant adoption) does not mean it is natural or valid. It is just something they did.

Adoption is wrong. Really. Who in their right mind can seriously be okay with CAUSING loss and trauma? Who can be okay with the act of severing a child from their family tree? Adoption today has become such a huge industry and an entitilement in the minds of society that there has been a massive disconnect from morals and good values of preserving familes. Indeed, there are those in adoption who feel they shouldn't help preserve families and are not interested in altruism at all. They happily wait for the collapse of families and eagerly take children with open arms with very little thought, if any for the families this child actually comes from.

Adoption is a lie. It seeks to create a falsehood out of a person's life by stating they are born to strangers. Sure, these people are not strangers as the child grows but it doesn't change the fact that those adopting really are nothing but strangers. While illusions of grandeur run rampant in a PAP's mind about how they always knew this would be "their" child and how this child "grew" in their heart (a biological impossibility and quite frankly, ridiculous), this baby is thinking "who the hell are you and where is my mummy?"

So please, do not be fooled by the lovey dovey videos placed on certain websites about how adopters and first families can be one big happy family. That this is not a loss but a chance for your child to have this that and the other. This is a fallacy as I have heard many adopters state they never wanted an extented family, just a child. Adopters don't really care about YOU, they just want your baby.

All your child needs is their mother to stand up and take responsibility for her life. Your child doesn't need a flash house, car, toys. Millions of children the world over do just fine without those things. They are a materialistic desire. Plenty of mothers continue to study, work, travel as a single mother. Yes, it is hard but so what? Life IS hard. And if you think handing your baby over to strangers makes it any easier, please, that is just another pandora's box and a whole lot of hard on a totally different plain.

So now you know the hard facts, the ones those in government agencies and organisations/counselling centres will not give you. Sure, this might seem awful and harsh but I wish someone had laid this all out for me when I was pregnant. I wish someone had pulled me up, slapped me and brought me out of the brainwashed induced fog I was in and told me I could do it. That I wasn't selfish for wanting to raise my child; that loving my child did not equate with abandoning her. But I was not that lucky. I do not want to see more stories like mine and it hurts to see more women being lied to about a system that does not exist.

New Zealand operates under a barbaric act. True, it is merely a law but it is a law with no thought for a mother and her child. It is engineered entirely to get children adopted, for the sake of those adopting. The child and the mother are not relevant to this act. We don't need JUST a change in our Act, we need an Inquiry into all the practises this Act has allowed. We need redress to all the families who have been maimed by this ancient legislation. If New Zealand really wants to move with the times then an Inquiry will be called and from that, a new Act, if any at all, can be borne.

Mothers really are at the bottom of the trash heap...

2010-11-20T01:09:00.006+11:00

Earlier today I read a comment on another blog that has really unhinged me. And the support it has received I think has upset me more.

The fact any PAP or adopter can compare themselves to a person in need of a heart transplant to me, is one of the most disgusting things I have ever heard. And to be seen as similar to these people who feel so entitled to another woman's child infuriates me.

People who need a heart transplant are very ill people (um... stating the bleeding obvious here). If they do not receive a heart, an organ, they will die. In order to get one, yes, they first must wait for people to die (again, the obvious). But in the meantime they could very likely die waiting for one. I understand that a patient's need for a heart means someone else must first die and then another family will suffer loss however this NEED for a transplant is far different to the 'need' of someone to adopt. In fact people do not NEED to adopt. They WANT to adopt. BIG difference. The desire to adopt will not lead to a life and death situation for those who are wanting a child.

The entitlement people feel to other people's children is incredibly sickening. The idea that any PAP or adopter out there is as worthy of receiving a child as a waiting transplant patient is of receiving an organ to help them LIVE is so very unbelievable it would be laughable if I hadn't just read this. It is a bold slap in the face to a mother and her child wrenched apart and it is basically saying to a mother "well we needed a child more than you WANTED YOUR child" WTHeck?? Seriously. WTHell is this world coming to?

I am seeing a concerning pattern emerging of late that sees any adopter show any glimpse of weak understanding towards a mother and her loss and then BAM! suddenly their thoughts and feelings are MORE important, MORE valued than anyone elses.

Its like losing Amber all over again. Our needs... my daughters need to be with me, my need to be with her as Nature and Survival created, thrown out with the trash and superseded by others.

I am thrilled there are adoptive parents out there coming on board, opening their hearts up to the truth of adoption and seeing what really lurks under all the media hype and lies. Truly, I am thrilled. It is a start... but I would not be in this place I am today if it wasn't for adoptive parents wanting MY child. I wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for a judgement from others that they could parent MY child better just because of a stupid metal band around their finger. My daughter would be here with me and HER FAMILY right now if it hadn't been for adopters TAKING her from me. And I am not the only one in this situation.

The only way for adopters/Paps etc to really 'get' the truth about adoption is NOT to adopt. Lately I have read blogs of people who have claimed they now understand both sides of adoption and the atrocities in adoption and it has confirmed their resolve to adopt AGAIN. They DON'T get it. Really. Because if they did, they wouldn't adopt!

I am sick of walking on tip toes. Sick of trying to be positive about something that is as destructive as a bullet in my skull or a knife embedded in my heart. That is what the rest of society wants and needs in order to tell themselves it is okay to hurt more women and children. Well, screw you. I am not playing your game anymore. Adoption hurt (putting it rather mildly) me. It hurt my children. And there is no healing from a wound that never stops bleeding so enough of the healing chatter and the happy dappy lets be positive crap. Adoption hurts. Don't like reading that? Tough. Its the truth and I am tired of walking on egg shells for people who just don't want to SEE it for themselves.

On with the Show

2010-11-12T12:46:00.004+11:00

"The Show Must Go On" - Queen

Empty spaces - what are we living for?
Abandoned places - I guess we know the score..
On and on!
Does anybody know what we are looking for?

Another hero - another mindless crime.
Behind the curtain, in the pantomime.
Hold the line!
Does anybody want to take it anymore?

The Show must go on!
The Show must go on! Yeah!
Inside my heart is breaking,
My make-up may be flaking,
But my smile, still, stays on!

Whatever happens, I'll leave it all to chance.
Another heartache - another failed romance.
On and on...
Does anybody know what we are living for?
I guess i'm learning
I must be warmer now..
I'll soon be turning, round the corner now.
Outside the dawn is breaking,
But inside in the dark I'm aching to be free!

How true the words of this song are. I understand all to well the lines of the chorus... because I live this every day as I wake up.

Being a mother of loss is no easy task. It is not simply something one can box and forget. Rather, it is something that haunts your every cell, fibre, breath of your body. You have no control over when the loss will bloom to full velocity, or when you will have a bad day. It will just happen. Triggers can be anything or nothing. Because it can just HAPPEN. Because it is part of you now. This loss, this void that can never be filled.

This loss screams at you; sometimes never ending, other times you can be lucky enough to drown it out by keeping busy. But it never stops screaming. In your sleep, it is inescapable. Dreams, flash backs, memories... at anytime whenever they choose.

But no one in your every day life would know. Like in the chorus of this song, our hearts are breaking, our "make-up" may be flaking but our smiles betray nothing. No one would know about our secret mutant wounds, bleeding freshly, never having the chance to heal over for more than a day before it is torn open again.

But our "show", as mothers of loss, continues. We have jobs, many of us have families, we are involved in the community. We do not look any different from the next woman. No one would notice the gaping hole in our middles on the outside. We have learned to hide them well, for the sake of society. We have learned to keep our smiles fixed to our faces. For the sake of the Show. The Show of Adoption.

Why though, is this expected of us? Other mothers of loss are given the respect they should receive. Losing a child to death or by kidanpping, these mothers are given time, their loss is respected and they are expected to grieve. So why are we different?

Because our pain is irrelavent. Our pain is inconvenient. We are not seen as people in society, rather we are vessels for others to get what they want. Our children are not seen as people with their own personalities, their own identities. They are not seen as we, their mothers see them, with roots going back generations. As members of a family who resembles Daddy or Mama or Uncle Jo. No, our children are seen as puppets; dolls even, whom these adopters can bring to life by adopting them. The fact the have a family already becomes irrelavent; Nature is thrown out the window. And then, once they are adopted, they too must live the "Show". Never speaking out of turn, never given the freedom to grow up as everyone else does. Kept young, dismissed, disrespected.

It is time the actors in the Show of Adoption are allowed to finish. To speak up, be heard and respected as people. You know, REAL people, and not figures for others to manipulate in their play. It is time this Show was rewritten or ended altogether and a new show penned. Like those long running shows in Broadway or on the West End that become tired and naturally end... it is time this Show also found a closing.

To end this post, I would like to mention Cassi's latest post. As I was blogging, I took a break and glanced at my reader list which came up with this post. Please read it. Because it is true. The same goes for our children. They are real and a part of us.

If you are looking to adopt, please re-examine why and ask yourself if you would rather build up a family than tear one down. If you are hurting from infertility, I am very, very sorry for your loss. Truly I am. But I urge you to ask yourself why would you want another woman to suffer because you have? You may be able to relate to the words of this song as well however please do not be responsible for making these words someone else's reality. It is not our responsibility. We did not cause anyone's infertility so please do not create a mother of loss. It is a circle that will only ever bring pain and heartbreak in the long run.

And now... back to the Show.

Lucky

2010-11-08T14:10:00.001+11:00

That is how I feel today. Lucky and blessed. HOW?? Some of you might say?

Well... you see, I have been embraced by a multitude of people online from all walks in the adoption world and the support, love and compassion I have seen from these people is really quite incredible. I have been lucky really since the beginning of my journey in loss to find so many amazing people. It started off in 1999 with Dian Wellfare who I cannot describe how awesome she was, who introduced me to Lily and the rest of the NSW Origins group. From there I went online and found a world waiting for me I never knew existed.

Since those early days, more groups (I hope you know who you are) have embraced me and I have learned so much. I couldn't be more thankful. My blog has introduced me to so many wonderful people to (despite the not so nice encounters) to and has given me hope, even if just a sliver, that there are some ethical people out there.

So to all of you, my beautiful and amazing online friends who have taught me so much and helped me grow, depsite people labelling you "bitter and twisted" and putting you in boxes to help them cope better, I thank you from the absolute bottom of my heart. People who chose not to see you for the beauty you exude from within are the ones who are blind. None of you are haters, I only see people who love so much they want to prevent others from being hurt. I wish we could have known each other under different circumstances but I am grateful to not be walking this awful path alone. I am sorry for your suffering but blessed by your desire to want to help others. I wish others could see you for the people you truly are.

Sorry if this all sounds so corny or to mushy but I really had to let you all know.

A very grateful Myst xxx

Humpty Dumpty...

2010-11-02T16:19:00.000+11:00

As a child, this nursery rhyme saddened and disturbed me. It was one of my least favourite and it felt very heavy for a child. At the age of three or four I can remember lying in bed, trying to go to sleep whilst mulling it over in my head and trying to think of a way they might be able to put Humpty back together.

But now, in my 30's I understand what this rhyme was all about and it really isn't for children.

There are many things that can happen in a person's life and I have had some of these less pleasant experiences and whislt they have impacted me in different ways, they did not break me. Until I lost the most precious person in my entire existence. MY daughter.

I am Humpty Dumpty. And I am broken. Nothing can ever put me together again and I wonder why I try to fool myself that things will be okay when at my core I know, I just know, they can never be. Losing Amber screwed me up and yes I am a highly functioning person in my world outside of adoption but it is because I have forced myself to try to move on. But I see the pieces of me scattered everywhere and just when I think I have finally put myself together, something will come along and gently brush against the fragility of my existence and I will be shattered all over again, with shards being discarded in millions of directions.

Mothers are not supposed to lose their children just because they are young, unmarried, have less money. Mothers, the world over are SUPPOSED to raise their children. It is what Nature intended for us. We are not supposed to carry and create children for the purpose of abandoning our flesh and blood. It screams unnatural to do this. At our very core, in the belly of our primal knowledge. I read the blogs and stories of women who like to applaud themselves for doing this and I really detest them. This new breed of women who take delight in being a "birth"mother, an Incubator. It is utterly revolting and as far from Natural as you can get.

A mother is supposed to love, nurture and raise the child she brought into this world. She is not meant to lose or give them up.

I will never be whole. Amber is never going to be my daughter in the way she should be, the way Nature intended. Her adopters will always be between us. I know she will always have room for them in her life and I understand why but they don't deserve it. They ruined me. Not an agency, not a system. Her adopters with their lies and tricks.

As another visit looms, I crave her so much. And yet there is something that is always off kilter. Something that is never right between us. And that is because an unnatural, evil man-made institution came into our lives and tore us apart. Adoption.

To anyone who wants to be aware of adoption and all of its aspects, do not be fooled by the utter rubbish you are fed in the media. You are fed that crap because the industry is trying to make more money. Think. How natural is it to tear families apart? Do YOU want to be responsible for pushing Humpty Dumpty off the wall? Because that is what happens everytime a mother and her child are separated. You break someone into millions of shards. And if you think that is okay, then there is something wrong with you and people like you are the reason this world has turned into something unsafe for the children of tomorrow.

"Love" in adoption

2010-10-31T20:22:00.006+11:00

Cassi at Adoption Truth recently blogged this post "You said what??" about the fallacy of loving your child so much you would abandon them.

This topic is much like a red rag is to a bull for me (see also previous post "Love and abandonment") given it is the one tactic that tipped me over the edge and so I am going to expand on it further.

I basically wanted to centre this post around the quote Cassi found which said:

“Birth parents can be wonderful loving people, in fact the most loving people when they do a very loving thing by giving their child to a family.”

WTF?? Are you freaking serious?

Okay, so if I walked up to the next stranger on the street I saw with a baby and asked them to hand it over to me because I would be a better parent for some irrelevant reason like money or whatever, I shouldn't expect to be "cussed out" or slapped. Rather, I SHOULD expect them, because they apparently love their child so much, to just hand THEIR child, their precious family member, over to me, a complete stranger, just to PROVE they love their child. Sound ridiculous to you? It does to me!! And I know the rest of the world would just think this was some sick joke yet in adoption, this is what mothers and fathers are not only EXPECTED to do but somehow, if they DON'T do it, i.e. if they do what everyone else does in this world and keeps their child, they are abused for it and told they are going to ruin their child's life.

This concept of proving love by abandoning your child is a one way street. Again, only in the sordid world of adoption, is this lie seen as truth and rammed down the throats of vulnerable and confused pregnant women who only want what is best for their child. The adopters on the other hand are EXPECTED to keep this child and should the real parents DARE to do what was naturally expected of them and ask for their child back well, the adopters are given all of the support whilst the family of the child is kicked to the curb and quite literally shat on in the media.

I have even seen adopters say things like, "I could never give X back, I love him/her to much" and yet the mother would most likely have been told if they truly loved their child they would place them for adoption.

This says two things. One, that love can only be proven by abandoning someone and two, that adopters don't love the children they adopt (which happens to be true in many cases; (note I didn't say all!) they love what the children can do FOR them as opposed to the child themselves). Now, I am sure those saying "give up your child to show you really love them" didn't mean to imply the second point. But they obviously didn't follow the natural conclusion of this distorted logic.

So if you do take the time to follow this logic through to its conclusion, you see not only how contradictory it is but that it aims to make a lie out of EVERYTHING we know of love and how we feel when we are in love. Since when has abandonment EVER said Love?? In fact, I would say it says quite the opposite... like "what was so wrong with me that he/she didn't stay/left/gave me away etc?" And, applying it to adoption as in this instance, it also says adoption isn't really about love because adopters wouldn't prove the love for the child they adopt by giving him/her up so the whole theory of adoption being this loving option then goes out the window too.

It truly is a ridiculous lie, and a very, very dangerous one.

I wish I had realised this earlier in my brainwashing. I wish I had known this was just a ruse they used to get me to do something I had already said I would NOT do. But sadly, THIS, THIS LIE amongst the threat of her being taken and another lie of a three day trial, tipped the balance for me. Because had I NOT had this lie, I wouldn't have cared about the three day promise and the threat that if I didn't sign someone else would. I cannot describe how much I loved and still love my first born. It was unlike anything I had ever experienced and I was told over and over and over etc if I really loved her, really cared for her well being, I would hand her over to a stranger. For me it was the final nail in our coffin. And so I signed. Within hours of her being taken out of my arms, I realised the lie. And thus started my battle to get my daughter back.

I wish I had been a lioness. In the animal kingdom, barring murder or a tranquiliser, if you dared to try and remove a cub from his/her mother, you could safely expect to be torn to shreds. And she would be well within her rights to do so. In fact if she didn't, it wouldn't be seen as normal. Yet in the human realm, we treat mothers with so little respect or reverence. They are seen as interchangeable where the desire suits. Replaceable. And this is in direct contrast to how a newborn sees his/her mother. To them they are their world. They KNOW when their mothers, the ones they grew inside are gone. They KNOW. And this hurts them more than we could ever imagine. Yet we still do it in the name of "Love".

Love. Have we lost the meaning of what love is? Is that what is happening, or has happened? Love is not abandoning one's child to fulfil the lust of another stranger. Love is not keeping a child from his/her family. Love is not denying a person their name, heritage, family roots. Love is not meant to be conditional. And yet adoption is all these things and more. Follow this through and you see what I see. Love and adoption are worlds apart.

New Blog!

2010-10-27T14:23:00.003+11:00

A few years ago, I met a fellow Kiwi mother (for those who don't know what I mean by "Kiwi" - it means a New Zealander; we often refer to ourselves as Kiwis as they are our native bird) who lost her daughter in 2005. When I first met her I was devastated because my case had done NOTHING to prevent her losing her child. I seriously was very upset about it and my husband would tell me over and over again it wasn't my fault. I knew it wasn't but still, I felt responsible. Sadly we lost contact for a while again BUT a few days ago I found her again in blog land!

So it is with a mixture of pride and much sadness as I wish it were under WAAAAAY different circumstances that I introduce her blog here and hope you will all pop over and visit her some time soon.

You can find it here: hidden beneath the surface

Myst xxx

Just love this!

2010-10-25T11:18:00.000+11:00

Cedar from Adoption Critique has recently blogged this fabulous post about those icky letters PAPS write to expectant mothers and basically the truth behind what those words really mean.

Please pop over and read. It is honest and exactly what happens to so many mothers. A great post!

"Dear Incubator"

How dare they?

2010-10-14T13:51:00.003+11:00

Over the past few years I have encountered many stories very similar in theme to the current case playing out with the Vaughn family and the father of the child the Vaughns literally took.

And what gets me is the audactiy of PAP's and adopters who feel they have the right to another person's child and, when a member of that child's family decides to do what is their natural right and NORMAL, i.e. to raise their child, these selfish strangers decide to fight to take away this child from their heritage, identity and only family.

Please keep in mind, this post is ONLY about the cases of adopters fighting for children the parents want to raise and not about this that and the other in family law. Really. I don't want to hear it because it isn't pertinent to this subject.

When I first lost Amber because some people decided they would be better parents because they were married and had some money (well not heaps but more than me), I was told my story was unusual and so yes it was justified that I would be angry. Since then I have discovered this is just not true. Mothers from all over the world have emailed me with their stories; some in the process of trying to fight for their children, others who fought and lost and in none of these cases had the mothers done anything "wrong" (none of these mothers were alcoholics, promiscuious before the pregnancy, into drugs etc)... except, they fell prey and then easy victim to the adoption industry. And, instead of realising to truly love a child and want a child's best interests and welfare is to ensure the mother and child bond is retained and continued, selfish people have literally taken the children of these mothers away feeling they were more entitled.

Well I have a message for all of you who do this. You are despicable human beings. Truly and completely despicable and your actions prove to the world you do NOT and are NOT capable of loving the child you take from another woman's (or in some cases, man's) arms. If you really loved the child you say you do, you would do the right thing and put aside your desires and wants and give the child back to his/her family no matter what you think of them. To take a child against their parent's wishes regardless of what a court says is really no different to abduction because like abduction it is a crime against both the child and the parents. It doesn't matter if you look after the child, if you give them items they might not otherwise have. It doesn't matter if you have a beautiful house and this toy or that. Those things are merely that, just things. They do not give a person security in their identity. They do not show a person who their family tree is. They do not mean anything.

You could be cool, awesome or whatever to your friends and family but the action of taking a child against his/her mother OR father's wishes is a crime. A crime against the child. A crime against the parent. And a crime that will have lasting affects throughout the coming generations. You think just because a court says its okay that redeems you? Well, no. It doesn't. Every day the so called law courts do the wrong thing, and justice is seldom done. People get away with doing unimaginable crimes whilst others go to prison for doing nothing. In the eyes of Nature and those with a moral conscience, anyone who fights to take a child from their family is a criminal. A person with no moral fibre and has stooped to being a low life just to get what they want. That is what crimnals do. They see what they want and they take it with no care or thought what their actions will do to others. And that is what any adopter/PAP's who fight in court against a mother and/or father for their family is. A low life criminal only thinking about their needs.

Stop lying to yourselves. You don't love that child. You can't.

And to those adopters out there who close open adoptions or lie to the child they adopt by not being honest, you are of the same filth. You are liars, dishonest thieves and I am sick of your existence littering the earth hurting people as you go. Shame. Shame on you. I pray Karma comes back and hits you when you least expect it. I am capable of compassion. I know I am. But when I see people CHOOSING to be blind to the pain they cause DELIBERATELY to ease their own guilty conscience, then my compassion is replaced by white, hot rage. You are not deserving of my compassion. Or anyone else's for that matter. The sad thing is you make adoptive parents who strive to care, love and understand their children look bad. Because all you care about is yourself. God have mercy on you because I sure as hell do not.

In the Bible I have read of the "unforgiveable sin". Well in that same vein, as a person who is supposed to be created in God's likness, I have one of those as well. And it is the theft of my child. My daughter, conceived by rape but still loved by me and the rest of her family, was not meant for adoption. I was bullied, coerced, lied to in order to pry her out of my arms and then when the Judge overturned my consent by saying the original agreement for her to live somewhere else no longer stood because I was standing there accepting my responsibility to raise her, two people decided they wouldn't accept that and fought for her, using corruption and deception. I didn't lose my child, she was stolen because of people like the Vaughns. I pray this little boy will be reunited with his father quickly where he belongs and the Vaughns learn their place in life. As strangers to him, like they were before he was born.

PAPS/Adopters: You do NOT have the right to another family's child. Whatever your reason is for adopting, it does NOT ENTITLE YOU TO ANOTHER MOTHER AND FATHER'S CHILD. Please, for the sake of the children you covet (and the rest of their family), get this in your head.

And because I know I am likely get some hate mail out of this because it isn't done to speak the truth, bite me. I don't care. I am sick of playing the adoption game. If you want to see adoption with blinkers on, fine, your choice. But for the rest of us enlightened ones, we will continue to speak the truth because we are sick of living in the dark created by the likes of you.

The "Primal Wound" debate

2010-10-11T12:39:00.001+11:00

Every time I see this debate rear its head I feel sick. My first thought is "Really? Again? (sigh)"

Literally months before I gave birth to my daughter and then lost her during the long fight to keep her (shock, horror, how dare a mother want to raise her own child, who would dream of doing such a thing!), I completed my diploma in Early Childhood Education. Over the course of my studying, I learnt and researched many studies and theories which support what I was to read years later in Nancy Verrier's book.

On top of the many books, papers and studies I read, I was able to observe the mother/child bond first hand through my many placements and previous work. One of these placements included a mother who was clearly post natally depressed and I saw how this led to a devastating fracture in her relationship with her barely 5 month old daughter and the effect it had on her.

I am not going to discuss the book or its theory here. It has been rehashed a million times and the argument is circular but what I will say is that outside of adoption, in the realm of normality where the truth of the bond between a mother and her born-to-her child is accepted, the "Primal Wound" theory makes sense. Not just about children adopted but to all children who for a myriad of reasons have to be separated from their mothers. There have been numerous research studies recently which have proven the detrimental effect of removing children from the care of their mother even for a few hours; the stress and anxiety it causes in a child has been lodged through the testing of DNA. So it is easy to believe a child removed from their mother's care entirely would undergo an even bigger trauma. But, enter adoption and again - shock, horror, this is all thrown out. All of a sudden children are seen to be more resilient and can therefore cope with more trauma so it is okay to inflict this ridiculous insitution on them because they will not be affected.

Suddenly all the science, research and truth in the entire world is meaningless when adoption is introduced on the scene. Infants are suddenly blank slates with no feelings, no personalities - in a word they are seen as abnormal*. Yes, that is what I said. I am not going to beat around the bush. Children being adopted are somehow seen as DIFFERENT to children kept. They are discriminated against, their feelings are totally dimissed, their personalites denied. I have watched this in my own child and it angers me greatly. People do NOT have a right to treat children this way. Children are NOT TOYS. They are NOT little puppies and kittens that can be transferred from one mother to a stranger witout damage. Anyone who denies the truth of the damage done in separating a mother and her child does so to suit their own needs, they do it for the love of themselves. There is no love for the child in this action and is truly sickening.

As I have said before in another post, adoption is purely hypocritical. It takes everything that is known and recognised as normal and true and throws it out the window. People like to see adoption as some altruistic institution but it is completely the opposite. There is no room for altruism in adoption. If people were truly altruistic, they would be helping to build communities (see previous posts) and helping families stay together. But oh no, it is too easy to give into one's desires and take what one wants than to put those desires aside and do what it takes to be ethical.

So, people will and can continue to dismiss the evidence behind the Primal Wound theory until they are puce in the face. It won't change that it speaks a universal truth which is a mother and her children should be kept together and where there needs to be intervention (i.e. in actual, real, dire situations like abuse), that intervention needs to be as gentle as possible and not the great hulking devastation that adoption brings. It will not change the absolute fact that adoption hurts and emotionally maims lives. I have heard people use the excuse that children and people are reslilient, they will adapt. That is a reason to cause pain??? Would you walk up to someone and shoot them in the arm and say, "oh well, you will adapt, you will heal so this won't matter"? (too bad if it leaves you crippled for the rest of your life) This really is the same thing. It is known adoption causes pain and yet people continue to push for it. Shooting someone falls under a criminal act. Adoption should to, particularly infant adoption, as it is also a weapon of destruction and hurts in a different way. It hurts families; not just those immediately involved but siblings, children, grandchildren, uncles, aunties etc.

The "Primal Wound" might have been a book written in recent times by an adoptive mother. But it speaks an ancient knowledge and truth which does not need science, arguments and the like. Its truth has stood the test of time and will always be that way despite the depravity of mankind to seek what they want, what they lust after.

*I just want to say I DO NOT see adoptees as abnormal. I see people who have been adopted as discriminated against and beaten down and it angers me. I used this word to describe how I feel others perceive adoptees based on the numerous blogs, Yahoo! Answers answers (lol), forums, posts etc I have seen where adoptees are dismissed. I also want to say I know quite a few adoptive parents who do NOT fall in the category of the type of adopters I have posted about. I know there are adoptive parents who understand all to well the truth of the pain adoption brings and kudos to them for recognising this. You know who you are (I hope :) )

Following on from my last post

2010-10-05T12:55:00.001+11:00

The other night after I blogged my recent post, I saw an advertisement on TV which spoke volumes to me and I found it rather fitting considering my recent post.

The main message was this: Help 1 woman out of poverty and she will bring 4 others with her. I visited their website and re-watched the short but powerful ad again. I then proceeded to scroll down and found this ad I find beautiful and powerful and so very, very true. (see below)

Women and mothers in poverty do not love any less than Western women. Being poor does not disqualify a woman from being a good mother. All poverty does is deny her a voice, a chance and a choice. We all have power to help and yet so many would rather just take her children and leave her there to bleed in silence. Please help break the curse of poverty to mothers and their children, don't adopt, seek to help the root of the issue. Build people so they can in turn build their communities allowing and enabling children to stay with their families.

Something to share with my readers...

2010-10-04T12:37:00.006+11:00

Okay, so that was an incredibly short break however I have learned this month no matter how much you want to lay low, escape adoption world, deny the feelings related; even when you are not seeking for it but have your face in another direction, it will seek you out because it has become a permanent fixture of your life by the mere fact it stole a whole chunk of your life... along with your flesh and blood. This however is not what I had to share with you.

One thing I appreciate about the internet is the many different perspectives and stories it allows people to share. Obviously like every other person, I am not going to agree with them all and indeed some I find downright scary in the I-can't-believe-people-out-there-think-like-that scary.

On a read through of blogs this month, I came across a blog I hadn't read for a while because I am used to reading this blogger on another blog and the post, so beautifully written had me sobbing from the first few lines to the end.

And of course it had me thinking. About the perception that the only way to care for children in other countries living in squalor is to adopt them.

Some of this I think I have blogged about before and if it is a repeat, I apologise. But in my recent readings across blogs, I still feel there is this perception that without Americans adopting (in particular - those who adopt most from overseas and talk about it all the time) children would not survive.

Again, I have repeatedly said there are many alternatives to adoption which have been poo-pooed, dismissed and I have been told these alternatives would ONLY be possible IF we lived in an idealistic world. To all this I say nonsense.

And the reason I say it? Because I have SEEN the alternatives with my own eyes and perhaps all my adoption-is-not-the-way started long before my daughter was taken for said institution but back when I was a young girl, living with my family in the slums and squatter shanty towns of Manila, Philippines.

My parents became Christians in the 70's and believed in living the word of Christ rather than merely paying it lip service and going to church every week on Sunday. My father is a minister and in 1985 when I was 8 years old, my family moved from New Zealand to Manila to live amongst the poorest of the poor and bring the Message to them the way the Bible instructed. They went to serve these people and this has had a very large impact on my life. We lived as they lived, became sick as they did and yet, we saw so many miracles, so much joy, happiness, kindness and love amongst these people. For myself I witnessed much sorrow and death of young children as well as all the joy and it taught me to be grateful that I lived in such a wealthy nation and for all the things we had ever had.

During our time here we lived in two different slum areas. The first we were there only for 9 months or so when my parents heard of a slum needing a church so we moved to that area. Barely within a month or so of our time in this new slum, news came of a family who had given birth to triplets. By this time everyone knew of my love for anything baby and babies so I was taken to see them. They were tiny and their family lived in a one room shack with three other children. My parents became involved and started helping them. I cannot recall exactly what they were doing... but over time I knew they were helping with medicine and clean mlk powder from New Zealand. Two of the triplets became desperately ill and were hospitalised a few times. In one instance, the eldest triplet, Joanna, was given last rites by the priest and her parents were told by the drs there was nothing more that could be done. My parents were brought to the hopsital where my father laid his hand on this tiny child and prayed. People, I know, I know, this sounds a little crazy, weird even... but it worked. She was healed and came home from the hospital the strongest of the three. (These miracles happened frequently there)

Time came for my parents and our family to take a vacation. We went away for ten days and returned only to find Jean, the youngest, the one who had not yet been sick, had sadly died. I was heartbroken. By this stage they were about 6 months old and their birthday was 3 days before mine and I had practically lived with this family in all my spare time; helping their mother with all their tasks like dressing, cleaning, feeding them. I can still see Jean's small tiny porcelain like face in that tiny coffin. It was the first time I had ever seen a dead body... and it was that of a baby I had become to love so well.

From that time onwards, our involvment with them increased and over the next two years we watched the twins thrive. I was there every day after completing homework, would go there on Sunday mornng and get them ready for church, take them home with me... you name it, I became a little mother. So I wasn't really surprised when their mother asked me if I would like to take Joanna home and be her mummy. Of course at that age, that seemed like a grand idea and I didn't grasp the reality if what adoption was. I had no idea then that she would have been completely cut out of her family's life as if they had never existed to her in the law. I had no idea it would mean she would be "as if born" to me in the law. For me, it would have been an extension of what I had been doing the last two years and J would always be her mother. Of course my parents said no given I was barely 10 years old! So their mother asked my parents if they would adopt Joanna. Again they said no and instead, they HELPED this family. This family who was so desperate for help they would ask people to have one of their children. The father was heavily gambling and drinking their tiny, tiny income away and so my father helped him and he gave away both the drinking and the alcohol and went to work. He built a better home for his family. My parents were involved in a community project which developed businesses where everyone benefitted and so the whole area over the time we were there, became stronger. The hand pump, the only way to get water, was replaced by a real tap (to appreciate how big this really was, you have to try and imagine you have never seen running water ever before), people who lived in teensy tiny shacks built better homes, milk, medicine, medical care was all part of it. The experience of it is something I will never forget because it was hope in such a dark place.

In the west we imagine people only being happy if they have the trappings we do but this is not the case. Many adopters like to say "all you need is love" when it comes to adopting however this does not seem to apply to the mothers in slums. Again, more hypocrisy.

Earlier this year, my parents returned, for the first time in 22 years, to this area. And were amazed at what progress had been made. The church my father planted was now a school as well, connected to the church. There was a fully operational business system running through the church and the community was making money. They helped each other and they had so much more than we could ever have dreamed they would. Still not living by western standards but in some ways better as I personally see western standards as missing the vital things such as happiness and real love (you know, the unconditional type).

Best of all, was the greeting they received from J. She saw my father in the distance, from behind. Despite not having seen our family in 22 years, she knew it was him and the next minute my father had a woman who had literally run screaming crash into him in a huge bear hug. Next she turned crying happy tears to hug my mother. It was indeed an emotional yet happy reunion. They were able to see Joanna and Joy (the other triplet) who are now grown into adults. And they are happy, healthy and alive. My parents have proven adoption is not necessary. This was not the only story like it from our time but given my attachment to this family, it was the one that meant the world to me. My parents brought me home photos of "my" girls and their beautiful mother I had grown to love so dearly and my mother and I wept tears of happiness to see them so happy.

This story is not idealistic. It is not a one off. What it is, is proof that if all people who truly wanted to help, really help people less fortunate than them, then they could take that $ figure they were going to use to adopt and help many, many familes stay together. So I will persist in my message that adoption is NOT the way and now everyone will know it is because I have seen it first hand.

My parents are no one special (well to me they are) and yet they have done so much because they believed they could help. Imagine what our world could be like if half the West decided to do this? I can imagine and it hurts to see so many people lamenting their lack of children and their desire to whip one up out of their community just because their families are desperate and poverty stricken to keep them.

What I have to say is not about idealism. It is not about a what if. It is about showing you what the human spirit can do when it truly places the focus away from personal desires and wants. I know I may have lost many readers to this point because of the religious stuff... but this post wasn't about that. It was about showing you all that alternatives DO and CAN work. And I know this because I LIVED it.

Taking a break

2010-09-08T12:49:00.002+10:00

Thought I should pop in quickly to mention I am taking a much needed break from blogging for a little while.

Earlier in the year, I blogged about returning to New Zealand and visiting Christchurch. Since then, my husband and I have had several discussions with the view to relocating there; for me, my long awaited return home and for him, a chance to live a more outdoors style of life. The only thing that stopped me from committing to the move in the immediate future (as in this or next year) was family and of course Amber. I want to be in the same city as she lives in so if she needs me I will be available.

On Friday night (3 September) my husband and I chatted about bringing the date further. I have been homesick since we left Christchurch in May and would really like to be there sooner than later.

Saturday morning I was woken by text messages and realised I had several, a few from my best friend letting me know they had had a massive earthquake, 7.1 in magnitude. From what she says, it was very frightening and she is now looking for a new home as where she lived was pretty much destroyed.

For me, this has been unhinging. I did not suffer the quake and I am incredibly grateful for that because it was terrifying (and continues to be) for those who are there. But it has affected me all the same. The buildings affected are those I loved most; those I felt depicted Christchurch and told the story of how she came to be. They are a part of my family's heritage as my Mum's family had much to do with early Christchurch. I do not cope well with loss and that is exactly what this is.

Yes, Christchurch will rise from the ashes. Yes, it is amazing no one was killed in an earthquake the same intensity that killed 230,000 people only months earlier this year in Haiti. But it still hurts and I am going to give myself the time to grieve my beautiful city and the memories of what was. It is the only way to move forward and embrace the next chapter awaiting my home city.

Spreading the word....

2010-08-18T11:29:00.000+10:00

There are many thoughts and ideas for posts swirling around my head right now, so I am not sure what to post.

In the meantime, I would really like to suggest everyone pop over and read this blog written by Amanda. It is fabulous and it is difficult to know which post to choose exactly to promote as there are many that are brilliant.

When you have finished reading and processing those posts, I have some other awesome blogs for you to read, just check out some of these:
Real Daughter
Out of the Fog
Everyone shut up, but me

plus check out the blogs on my blog roll.

The above four blogs, written by those who know adoption best, give a real insight into how adoption affects a person... if you are open minded (as many of my regular readers are) you can learn so much from these beautiful people, we are lucky to have them in blog land!

2010-08-05T14:21:00.002+10:00

Dearest Amber-Rose,

I miss you. I love you. I wish you were here with me and not living someone else's life.

Love always,
Mama xxx

Gotta love those memories...

2010-07-31T00:04:00.001+10:00

The last couple of days, I have been reading blogs of varying topics from adoption to general parenting and for some reason when I went to bed last night, the memory that decided to grace me with its presence is the last day I saw Amber after losing the final court battle.

We had one more visit left and so I timed this to ensure my youngest sister T could meet her while she was visiting from Australia. Amber was 9 months old at this point and the battle to keep her had been going pretty much since she was born and I decided to raise her.

It was the 6th of October and I can recall the grey clouds; it was like the weather knew this was a bad day and was crying with me. I took her footprints and her handprints all the while never realising what it would be like, at the end of this visit, for her to leave my life. Gone, just like that. As if all her time inside me had never happened. As if the days in hopsital and the magical days that followed were dreams of my imagination. All gone with the granting of an adoption that was questionable at best. All gone because of the actions of selfish, dishonest human beings.

I had been over the whole scenario of letting her go in my head and wanted to be brave. I would try not to cry in front of her. I would do the right thing and hand her over as now there was no other choice if I didn't want to be branded a criminal.

But... it all changed when the time came. Her adopters turned up and reality sunk in, I started hyperventilating; they decided to wait in the car and the people I was staying with agreed to bring her out. Meanwhile my sister had taken up a spot on the pavement and just glared at the woman who had come to steal her niece (my sister was 14 at this point). Inside, the time came to hand Amber over. And I couldn't do it. My arms actually locked around her and I couldn't let her go. A, the lady who had to bring her out, eventually had to pry her out of my arms and as she did, I started screaming and I didn't stop screaming for some time. As she walked out with my daughter, A felt awful, she hated to be the one who handed her over because she didn't agree with what my daughter's adopters had done either. I was nothing but a mess on the floor. A said when she was handing her over, all she could hear were my hysterical and gut wrenching screams. In fact the whole street could hear and the neighbours had come out just to see what was happening.

I haven't thought much about this day since. To me, it was when I was thrust into hell and I had the chance to see how evil humans could be. For me, this is my blackest day in history and so I slammed the door as much as I could and tried to bury it in the deep recesses of my mind.

After my visit from Stacy and reading her blog amongst the blogs of other deluded paps, these memories have flooded their way back; forcing their voice to be heard. These women who want to be "paper" pregnant and parent a child at the expense of another family, have no idea of the trauma they are about to conflict on another woman, her child and her family. They talk about their "joy of parenting" being "stolen" and patronise people by saying things like: "...I got a little taste of the despondency & bitterness that inevitably accompanies lives who have yet to discover the path to healing through true forgiveness..." etc.

When I wrote about how adoption brings out the worst in humanity, I wasn't kidding. What I experienced when I lost Amber for me was worse than being raped, worse than being sexually abused at age 6, worse than when my father was wrongfully arrested in a foreign country and our home was stormed by men with rifles and bayonets, worse than the things we saw in the developing countries we lived in. I know trauma, very, very well. It has been a part of my life since birth as I battled to survive, not once but twice, but NOTHING has affected me as much as adoption. It was like all these awful things were just stops along the way to prepare me for the hell that was coming. I have wished more than once I could have died and started life all over again in fairy tale land.

Yet, here I am. With a beautiful family, three amazing children, a wealth of support and love surrounding me. I feel if I was a bitter person, I would not be as blessed as I am. If I was living a life full of anger and bitterness, our lives would reflect that and yet I have two happy children. These selfish, selfish people who cannot see further than their own desires to play house and being "mommy" need to know THEY are the bitter ones. The ones who are so blinded by their bitterness and greed, they are using their pain to make someone else pay. They are hurting people just to fulfil their desire and yet they cannot see how wrong this is. Instead, they turn it around and label anyone who dares speak out about the evil of adoption and shows its underbelly.

As has been stated many times before, I have great compassion for women unable to have children. My best friend, someone who was inseperable from me during my pregnant days with my daughter, found out only a few years ago, that she would most likely never have a baby. This news has devastated her beyond words. She is a professional Nanny, has been dedicated to caring for the children of others for years and this is what life has dealt her. How has she responded? Apart from the days where it is really just too much and she needs to vent, she has continued to care for these children. She has no desire to take another woman's child. She cannot comprehend those that pass by here from time to time to spew their ugly vitrol at me. It is totally beyond her that she would expect another person to feel pain because she is in pain.

I so wish I could help her. But there is no way to help except to be there to support her and share my children with her. She loves my kids and she is their other Auntie. We go to stay with her from time to time (she lives in another country) and she is a special person in our lives. I so wish it was different for her but the reality is, its not. But she has responded in the normal way, not in a way that is self serving or cruel and I love her even more for that because it could so easily been different.

She is not the only person I know in this situation and these other women are the same as her. They also could never prey on young women in the hope they would sever their natural, God-given relationship just so they could get what they want.

There is no such thing as children being born to be separated from their mothers. Pre-destination or whatever it is certain church people want to call it, doesn't exist in the way they think it does. In the Bible, where adoption is referred to, it is spoken about in terms of adults making a choice, not a helpless newborn being wrenched from his or her mother. Anyone who knew the heart of God, would know this and would cease their persuing of taking children from their families and seek to do what God/Jesus would do: find a way to keep mother and child together in every way possible. Any person disputing this is a liar and a theif and has no idea what is at the heart of the Christian message. And I say shame on you for using God and the church to justify a selfish, cruel desire that is never glorifying God but bringing disgrace on His name and His church.

I am so tired of the adoption world. Every day I see more and more cruelty directed at people; more and more entitlement oozing from people who feel they are superior to others and are somehow more deserving of their child. It is sickening. I have said it before and I will say it again. Adoption is sick. It is vomit inducing when you peel back the layers and see all the disease and infestation that lies beneath that glossy "Rainbows and Unicorns" exterior. For those who have had to live its pain and its daily horror, it is a monster and one I wish would just die.

"Paper" Pregnant?

2010-07-25T12:08:00.004+10:00

Recently I had the unfortunate experience of discovering new terms in adoption whereby a woman announces she is “paper” pregnant. What the? How can anyone be ‘paper’ pregnant?

Apparently, it is the term women use to announce the fact they have decided to adopt and are in the process of filling out the paperwork. Yes, you read that right. They are equating pregnancy to filling out paperwork. (Only in the deluded fantasy world of adoption would one see such idiocy).

According to several dictionaries, being pregnant means to be “having young developing inside the womb”. Paper means: “thin flat material which is made from crushed wood or cloth and is used for writing, printing or drawing on”. So I cannot see how these two words can be jammed together to create a logical term.

Adoption is bad enough but now we have to contend with insecure women who feel the need to steal the experience of being pregnant and downplay it to a piece of paper? There is so much more to being pregnant than just making a decision to have a child. There is so much more to being pregnant than just the baby showers and joy as one waits to deliver her baby.

Pregnancy is a complex PHYSICAL process and should never be degraded to another level just to make people feel better about not being able to experience it. I will never understand exactly what it is like to NOT be pregnant. I have seen many people experience this to know it is incredibly painful however, I also know these women who would never dare downplay the experience of someone else just to make themselves feel better.

The process of adoption is NOTHING like pregnancy. Yes, many emotions are involved but it is incredibly insensitive and insulting to equate the two. Being pregnant is giving life, bringing a child into the world. Adoption, especially infant adoption and today’s styles of adoption, is about encouraging family separation, money making, pain, loss and a host of other experiences I would want nothing to do with and would never play any part in.

Being pregnant is also about risk. Physical risk. It is not a matter of becoming pregnant and giving birth 10 months (9 months is a fallacy given pregnancy to term is on average 38-42 weeks long) later. No there are three stages of being pregnant and THEN there is the labour and THEN the birth. All very different stages. And everyone experiences these things differently.

Not all embryos survive and many pregnant women experience a nail-biting first trimester as they battle morning sickness, extreme tiredness, back aches, cramps plus a load more waiting to see if their much wanted and loved babies (official word: foetus) make it to the next trimester. When we make it through, there are the invasive tests; blood tests, scans, sugar level tests, tests than can involve needles through the belly etc to ensure the foetus is developing. I have had many friends who have suffered miscarriages at different stages and I have had one at a very, very early stage and it can be a devastating time.

Then there are women who are told their child may not make it and thus spend their entire pregnancy in hospital being poked and prodded and tested as they wait and see what will happen when their child is born.

During the second trimester, we do get to see our child through ultrasound, we do get to feel them moving inside us and an amazing physical, spiritual and physical experience can occur for many women: bonding.

Making it through to the third trimester is a relief as most mothers understand their unborn baby could make it if they were to give birth now.

It is also a very uncomfortable time and for some mothers it can be risky. Pregnancy induced diabetes, elevated blood pressure which can fast turn into a medical emergency known as pre- and full blown eclampsia where the mother’s life and sometimes the baby’s life is at risk. It is a time of needing to sit on the toilet constantly, nausea can return, size makes it difficult to walk far, breathing can become more difficult due to cramped space within the mother’s body and the list could stretch on. And this is just from the mother’s experience let alone the baby’s.

Next, it is time for baby to make their appearance and sometimes this is spontaneous and natural and at other times it is difficult and needs medical intervention. Labour is not easy and can be excruciating and drugs do not always work. Many complications can occur during labour and indeed I know to well what these can be.

Finally, the birth occurs. Yes, it is a joyous moment where mama and baby finally get to meet each other; a reward for all their hard work. But to get there? It is a harrowing journey for the newborn and painful for the mother. I have heard many horror stories of birth and have had my own and so holding your baby at the end feels like a huge reward for getting through to the other side. And it is all worth it. Except for some mothers, their baby is snatched away from them for no reason AT ALL except to satisfy the desire of strangers to have a baby. The very natural process of being pregnant and giving birth is interrupted by this unnatural, man created law known as adoption.

To then take all these experiences and then to insult them by claiming to be pregnant on paper is incredible. A person wanting to adopt should have worked past the need to take part in the pregnant/birth stage and be looking at the REAL issues of what adoption means. The loss, the pain, the lifetime of being forever linked to another family whether you want to be or not.

Yes, pregnancy is a joyous experience but please do not insult women who have actually gone through with it and claim to be “paper” pregnant because there is NO. SUCH. THING. The reason so many people adopt is because they CAN’T be pregnant and so they should DEAL WITH THAT and not create fantasies for themselves as it is really very unhealthy for them and any child they adopt.

Finally, if people really want to continue with the whole paper pregnant routine; please remember that at the end of it all, you will only be a paper parent.

The little things do matter

2010-07-20T16:24:00.001+10:00

Two mornings ago I woke having dreamed intensively all night. The last dream was the one that really stuck with me and I can still recall it now as I sit down to type this.

I have been very close with all three of my children; and each one of them has shown from birth how unique they are, right from the beginning.

This dream was more of a flash back than anything but as it involved scenes I was not present for, I can only assume I was in some state of sleep otherwise I would not have felt like it was a dream.

It started with a memory of Amber and I together, in the days after she had been discharged from the hospital. We slept in the same room, and had done so the moment I was allowed to take her out of the nursery in hospital. She had this peculiar little noise she would make; a little like snuffling but not really that either. It was a noise that indicated she was not settled and it is was rather loud. I loved it. Absolutely loved it because it was my cue to scoop her up out of her crib and lay her in my arms close to my chest and I would nuzzle her head as we would fall asleep. Miraculously, whenever I did this, the noises would cease and we would sleep like that, in silence, until she woke hungry, or as happened a few times, we would wake drenched in my milk! Still, after we were dry or after she was fed, we would resume this sleeping pattern and all would be quiet.

My dream took me on to my other two children where we had similar patterns. Noodle (my next daughter), never had the noise but she was happiest sleeping next to me in her crib, or later as she got older, in my arms. She didn't sleep in her own bed until she was four years old and moved in there of her own accord... once she was ready.

Then came our little Dude and his favourite place was on my left hand side, just above my breast where he could hear my heart beat. I discovered this shortly after his birth when the nurses and midwives had left us to try and attempt sleep (as it was after midnight when he was born) and he started making the same noises his biggest sister had made. Again, I scooped him out of his plastic hospital box, undid my night shirt and lay him on my bare shoulder. We fell into a blissful slumber.

From this point of my dream, I went into scenes not part of my memory bank and I only know this occurred because of what I was told by my daughter's adopters.

Not long after she was taken out of my arms, in fact within a day or two, her noises so precious to me and a sign of what she needed became too much for them to cope with... and so she was placed in a room, a strange, cold room, all alone. No rythmic breathing to signal I was there. No sweet smell of milk to let her know comfort was on hand. Before I woke with a tear drenched face, I could hear her in that room, all alone and it tore at me in a way I could never explain. I wish I could have walked into that room right then, gather her up and fled that house. Instead, I got to wake up.

When I woke, it hurt to breathe. Guilt overwhelmed me in waves. My little girl so happy and secure with me one moment only to be taken by strange arms with strange smells and foreign voices the next. I shudder at the thought of how her little mind coped with it.

Now it is still there, this sense of closeness. She doesn't even understand it herself. She melts into me whenever she touches me; it really shows how the small things in life really do matter. All this from a noise... and a bond that no man and no woman should ever, ever have interfered with.

It is never too late...

2010-07-04T23:30:00.002+10:00

Over the course of this past tumultuous week, as I have hurtled toward this day, I discovered this book, bought it and have been reading it non-stop ever since.

It is titled: "It is never too late..." by Patrick Lindsay. As I have felt so many things have been lost in the last 12 years, it has helped me realise that there are dreams I can rebuild and, slowly, if I keep looking forward, one day, I will get there.

Today was the Visit. The Visit I had dreaded more than any other visit. And I am still unsure why this day was so different, I just know I felt like I had spent all my energies and I could no longer pull anymore out of my hat and fight on. Yet I did:

"It is never too late.... to fight for Love:
If you know deep in your heart that it is worth fighting for,
then fight."

So, I went along. I grinned. I laughed, took "tea with my torturers", but most of all, I loved my daughter. I sat with her, swept back her hair, looked into her eyes and loved her. We spoke of the same things we always speak of; the safe topics I knew wouldn't raise the ire of her adopters whilst doing my damnest to quell the rage inside me. There was no talk of stopping visits; rather I quietly mentioned to my daughter, in the most casual way possible, how nice it would be one day to spend some time together, just her and I... perhaps catch a movie or go shopping. Her eyes lit up and she said she would like that. Now, I know this is unlikely to happen, however, she will know it is not from my end this resistance comes from, but that of her adopters.

My younger daughter, Noodle, sat on her sister's knee the entire afternoon and my eldest daughter showed Noodle her DS and how to use it... it was beautiful. My husband who is another of my staunch supporters, sat this one out and took our two year old son, Dude for some Daddy time, to help lessen the pressure. My family, as ever, rallied to make the day as good as possible and together we made it through. Until the next time.

At some point, not long before the end of the visit, the talk of email addresses came up between her and my sister who is currently here from the UK and the reason we had the visit. The look from a certain male was priceless. She could not sadly recall her full school email address and when she asked her adopters for their help they were silent and we never obtained said address... however, I wrote one of mine down in HER little book. Then, as everyone was moving towards the front room from the lounge room, she asked her male adopter for her mobile number to give to me which he immediately replied: "She has mine, she doesn't need yours". Well!

I am however a little devious. In my pocket, I discovered my Squiz cards which I slipped one of to her and whilst by some miracle both her adopters were out of earshot, told her she now had all my details and could text me her number when she had a chance and then we could text each other whenever she wanted. I also mentioned she should keep this between us for now to which she grinned and replied "oh yes". Wow... it is amazing how little hope can appear and how much it can make you feel. It may not happen, she may not have the strength to fight her captors as yet however, the seeds are there and she now knows I am open to more contact with her but I understand how difficult it might be.

Incidentally, this is not the first Squiz card I have given her and yet she acted like she had never seen one before which confirms to me her mail is definitely being sensored as I have sent several in letters.

There was nothing different about this visit. The pretend games were there, in full velocity. It sickened me the entire visit and yet we had snippets of time where for mere seconds we could share ourselves authentically when the ever watchful eyes of certain people would stray.

I want to thank my readers, especially those of you who offered such love, for your support. Knowing I had you behind me, I got through this day however painful it was (and it was!) and I will make it through the next one. I also need to thank my sister C, as her unconditional love and unwavering support from the beginning of this ordeal has always helped urge me forward just that bit more. Thank you and love you too!

Again, thank you all from the bottom of my (broken) heart. You helped make today possible to bear.

Myst xxx

Authenticity - my lack of

2010-07-03T13:54:00.000+10:00

I am a fraud. My life is based on fraud. And I can't do it anymore.

We have another visit tomorrow and all I want to do is tell Amber the truth and that I can no longer play this game of lies and pretend. It has been going on for 8 years. 8 years I have played this game and I cannot do it.

Part of me waking up and wanting to live again means I want to be authentic and with the existence of this situation, there is no way I can be authentic. I feel as though I betray myself and my beliefs every time I have a visit. Every time I sit there pretending everything is just fine. But in reality, it isn't. It never has been and it can never be.

I don't want anymore visits. I want her in my life but in a way that is free and honest. To spend time without all the chains wrapped around us, ensnaring and trapping us in a game of make believe. I don't want to sit with THEM, the perpetrators of the crime, the liars, those who stole, yes, LITERALLY stole my child with the aid of money and a crooked judge. Haven't I played this game long enough?

And then there is her. My girl. Stuck in the middle of this. She didn't ask for it anymore than I did and her voice was never heard and is still drowned out. How can I walk away from her knowing she will not be allowed to see me without them tagging along? Yet, I know for the sake of my family that are here and now, I need to let her go. I need to do what I have never been able to do and accept she is no longer my girl. That is all gone. She never can be mine again because of the nature of adoption. It severs everything in all possible ways. Its poison kills off any chances. I see no hope, no chances and so why should I continue with this farcical game? How can any of this help her when we don't even talk? Even with reunions I have read about and see, I see only more pain ahead, no hope of anything being real. I will always be just her birther, her womb-for-rent, her abandoner. Which means I am nothing to her.

Today is a dark, dark day. I cannot see the sun through the clouds, cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel. I want to withdraw into a cave and never come out. Pain hovers too closely and I lack the strength to continually hold it off. Why did anyone think adoption could be a thing of beauty when all I have ever seen it do is cause more anguish than anything else...

So, what do you think?

2010-07-02T18:30:00.000+10:00

With the shift inside me, I felt it was time to change the look of my blog... I am fairly happy with the new look "me"... what do you think?

I love mountains... especially snow capped mountains. It reminds me of my childhood when I lived in the deep South Island of New Zealand, about an hour away from Queenstown where we were surrounded by mountains and Nature. We lived in a lovely little town where the pace of life was slower and I have many beautiful memories from this time.

Discovering this template is perfect as it is like staring out from behind the pain into what lays out there for me... my new dreams, new paths.

The raindrops on the window are representative of the tears and pain I will always carry; but the mountain is the hope that lies before me.

So time for a new look... and I like it. I hope you do to!

Please read and comment on this blog...

2010-06-28T11:37:00.004+10:00

Hey all,

I recently stumbled across this blog written by a young expectant mother who is (shudder) looking to give her child up to adoption (insert sound of breaking heart here)

We all know the damaging consequences of adoption to both the child and the mother... if you have the time and energy, please help enlighten her with the realities of adoption; you know the realities most out there in the wide world will try desperately to hide.

In the end it is her choice and we cannot, nor have the right to, make that choice for her but if she is to make a choice then she needs to have all the facts and that includes the ones no one really wants to disclose to an expectant mother.

Here is the blog:
Lia... Not Juno

She is trying to do what is best as many mothers do however with the desperation of many PAP's that will try to get her child, she needs to hear the voices that really matter and they are 1) Adoptees - the ones not living in lalaland and 2) mothers - again, the ones not living in lalaland.

I would hate to see yet another mother and her child fall victim to the industry of adoption and see another 2 people suffer for the next several decades and beyond.

The case against Adoption: Conclusion

2010-06-24T08:54:00.005+10:00

It has been some time since I visited this topic. And in that time, much has happened; here on my blog, on other blogs related to adoption and mostly within myself.

Through my other posts, I have presented reasons why I feel adoption is outdated as a law and institution. Many disagree with me whilst many others agree with me, even if they were not aware of it at the time! This has certainly been a journey all of its own.

However, I feel it is necessary to wrap this one up as I left it very much open and unfinished with my last post. I had intended to go further with the “series” as some would call it but I grew weary with the weight of this issue.

I disagree with adoption. Absolutely and completely. And I have come to the conclusion one of the the main reasons I detest adoption so much (apart from the many other reasons I have stated in the past) is because of what it does to people. The ensuing consequences; the reactions to the actions. What it did to me and created in me. The endless destruction. The negativity, lies, pain, anguish, hatred and more.

Adoption, as I have seen over the past 10 years since entering the wider world of adoption through the internet, brings out the very worst in people. Like THE worst. It brought out the very worst in me and turned me into someone I never was before adoption infected my life. And it is not someone I sit comfortably with. Not only myself, but I have seen and watched people become uglier than I could ever imagine and for me, anything that brings out so much hatred, violence and cruelty can never, EVER be a good thing.

Perhaps at one time, there were good intentions with adoption. I know there are individuals I have been privileged to meet who had and have very good intentions and have adopted for the right reasons. But sadly, the majority of people I have encountered across the world of adoption, have impacted on me in a devastating way. These are the people who reinforce the reason why adoption has become as controversial as it is. These people are the proof adoption is vile and full of everything BUT goodness, love and compassion.

As a child and young adult, I have seen and been in the middle of war, revolution, terrorism, starvation, pain, poverty, death and more. My family have faced many trials and I myself have been through some awful experiences. But none of them have ever had the destructive power in my life in the same way adoption has. I have never felt the force of evil quite so much as I have with adoption. With the above experiences, they are validated as horrific and there are, sadly, many people throughout the world who have been impacted by these same experiences and the world, for the most part, recognises these experiences as being terrible and thus appropriate actions are taken (in some cases) to provide care and assistance.

But in adoption… oh no. Poverty is seen as an excuse to take another person’s family to satisfy the need and ugly desires of another to have their own family. Hardships are seized on almost with glee by those facilitating adoption and are exploited for the personal gain of others. Babies and children are ripped from the arms of women and families for the sake of another’s selfishness and the worst part, PEOPLE TURN A BLIND EYE TO THESE EVIL ACTIONS. The hypocrisy in adoption is absolutely astounding. The double standards forced on those less fortunate than others who for some reason feel they have the right to dictate another person’s life to them, is beyond unbelievable. It is shocking. The mass abuse of human rights that occurs with adoption is bad enough without people refusing to see the truth of it.

I see this in articles splashed through magazines and newspapers, throughout the world of blogging and in the general public. I have seen pure venom directed at people in forums and commentary on articles. It is pure ugliness.

When people try to tell me adoption is all about love, I think about what I have read and heard and I cannot see the love. Because at the end of the day, the actions of so many people, agencies and government bodies has drowned out the love. The positives. I also feel that love can never grow in places that are entirely self-oriented, lustful and desire something that will only cause pain and destruction to another human being. For me, the nature of Love is to build someone up, not tear them down.

It is not wrong to want to parent. It is not wrong to want to have a child. What you decide to do with these desires is what determines if what you choose is right or wrong. Perhaps there would be room for adoption if it was so drastically changed it no longer resembles the adoption of today however, like I have stated in the past, once you change certain legalities about adoption, it is no longer adoption but some other law.

I have learned much through this journey of exploring why adoption should be undone. I have discovered there is a lot of common ground out there with people who do not see themselves as being anti-adoption. It has been a rewarding experience to learn and grow with the discussions online and through email I have had with my readers on this topic.

However, at the end of the day, I come to the conclusion that adoption is built on such a rotten foundation without the focus on the child and their best interests (despite what it says) and therefore needs to be scrapped with something less ugly built in its place. I admit, some of this feeling comes from my own pain and experience I have suffered at the brutal hands of adoption however I have seen too much and learned too much to ever see adoption in a favourable light.

Before people jump on the soap box and question me about orphans and abused children, please, give it a rest. This is a tired, circular argument which in the scheme of things is just an excuse people use to get what they want. Most people who have used this argument are not adopting the abused or orphaned children of this world but are lusting after the child of another mother so I am really not going there with you.

Adoption is about loss. Period. And until people can face this, many will continue to see it in a good way. Until people are courageous enough to face the truth of adoption and its demons, adoption will continue with all the ugliness it ensues. I just pray one day, the truth will be so obvious it can no longer be ignored and people finally start re-evaluating this barbaric practise and its consequences.

I Dreamed a Dream...

2010-06-07T13:06:00.003+10:00

Just as you are travelling along feeling grounded, something comes along to challenge you and trigger feelings of old. And this is what happened recently with "Glee" or should I say a couple of the songs from this show.

I have only ever watched a couple of episodes and have tried not to watch it due to all the hype surrounding it (I don't like being too mainstream LOL) however from what I have seen so far, it is okay. Anyway, the reason I watched it at all was due to the storyline surrounding Rachel and the recent discovery of her mother. (Long story short: Rachel is the result of a "surrogate" arrangement). Her first introduction to her mother was through a tape of her singing to Rachel and then you see Mother and Daughter on stage singing "I Dreamed a Dream"...

Wow, that song has had me feeling alot! I guess because of the setting in which it was performed and the words which I can so keenly relate to:

"I Dreamed a Dream" as sung in the show Glee (not sure who wrote the lyrics)

(Sung by the mother)
I dreamed a dream in time gone by
When hope was high and life, worth living
I dreamed that love would never die
I dreamed that God would be forgiving

(Sung by daughter)
Then I was young and unafraid
And dreams were made and used and wasted
There was no ransom to be paid
No song unsung no wine untasted

(sung by both)
But the tigers come at night
With their voices soft as thunder
As they tear your hope apart
As they turn your dream to shame

(sung by daughter)
And still I dream she’ll come to me
That we will live the years together
But there are dreams that cannot be
And there are storms we cannot weather

(sung by both)
I had a dream my life would be
So diff’rent from this hell I’m living
So diff’rent now from what it seemed
Now life has killed the dream I dreamed

The sections I have bolded are the words that stuck with me most. These words highlighted exactly what I was trying to say in a previous post about grieving what I had lost and the need to move on. Hearing the words put into song like this (I have a thing about music, it is my soul food) really spoke to my core. However, instead of leaving me broken, it has helped me see that yes, my life I dreamed of is dead... so now it is time to have a new dream and breathe life into something new for my whole family.

Life did kill the dream I had, the dream of my daughter and I and all the things we would do together... and I can never get that back. It will always be a loss. It will always be sad and painful. But now, right now, I have a chance to create a new dream, including her, and my other children. It will be difficult as it wasn't what I expected but it is where my journey is leading. So as I move through my own "Boulevard of Broken Dreams", I move onto another road, a new road with a new purpose. I have no idea what lies ahead for me on this road and there is no map to follow but I am ready to see what waits for me out there.

Missing You

2010-06-03T14:53:00.002+10:00

Some days, like today, for no reason at all, I can feel you; as if you are standing right next to me… and I miss you, miss you more than I do on all those other days I miss you. Like a ghost, I can feel your hand reaching out to me and I want to fold you in my arms and inhale your unique and precious scent.

Your smile has become like a drug to me. I stare at your pictures for hours, wishing our next encounter would be now and not in a mere number of weeks. I thought seeing you more often in a year would be enough but I find myself addicted to you, wanting more, never feeling satisfied with our time. And the person I crave is the you of now… not the baby I longed for so many years but the beautiful girl with long dark hair; the big beautiful brown eyes that almost mirror mine and your little sister’s.

I ache just to hear about the mundane things in your life, the little things. The books you have read, the songs you adore, your favourite movies, your friends; the silliness and innocence of pre-teen life.

I miss you so much… and it really hurts. I could never tell you this as I wouldn’t want to burden you but it has to come out or sometimes I feel it would swallow me and I am doing so well right now. I love you.

Mama xxx

The ongoing road to healing.

2010-05-18T08:22:00.004+10:00

Wow, it has been a while since I visited blogland! And in the last month, much has happened.

My husband, children and I recently visited New Zealand to attend my Nana's 90th birthday party and after a few days with family, we flew to Christchurch in the South Island, where I come from and where I lost Amber.

Ever since losing my child in this city, there has always been a bittersweetness about this city and I have fought with the feelings of anger and sorrow every time. But not this visit. Ever since I realised there was a part of me that would never heal; a piece of me that would always be broken (as blogged about in my post "Make Peace"), I have felt a difference inside me. An acceptance of who I am and in that, alot of healing has been taking place. I know now I did do everything possible at the time to keep my daughter and no one else can ever say anything different because they were not present and are therefore able to offer nothing but judgement from their limited understanding of my life. Catching up with my lawyer who assisted me in my battle to prevent the adoption taking place confirmed I did do all I could and it is time for me to enjoy life.

I walked through the city I had loved so very, very much and then been torn apart by and fell back in love with it. It really is a beautiful city.

I returned to the church I had been born into and where I had received much of the coercion that took place and looked those people in the eyes. What an amazing feeling that was, and so many chains around my heart fell away. This was another episode of taking back my power. Twelve years ago, I had left broken and battered and returned with my head held high, no longer afraid of what others thought or think of me. On the whole it was a very positive experience and I was embraced by many people. I do not feel I could ever be part of the church again but the sting that has followed me for so long has definitely been taken away. And with that, much of the burden I have carried for so long has also been lessened.

Of course, this changes nothing of how I feel about adoption and what I have learned over the past 12 years. Now the blindfold has been removed, it could never be replaced. Hopefully though, this progress in the neverending journey towards healing will provide me more stability, more conviction in what I say and how I share with others. Hopefully, I will be in a position to offer more of myself to my family and give them more of me as they deserve. And I fervently hope it helps my relationship with Amber, giving me more ability to communicate with her.

Boulevard of Broken Dreams... oh yeah, I have so been there...

2010-03-25T01:28:00.005+11:00

"Boulevard Of Broken Dreams" by Green Day

I walk a lonely road
The only one that I have ever known
Don't know where it goes
But it's home to me and I walk alone

I walk this empty street
On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Where the city sleeps
and I'm the only one and I walk alone

My shadow's the only one that walks beside me
My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
'Til then I walk alone

I'm walking down the line
That divides me somewhere in my mind
On the border line
Of the edge and where I walk alone

Read between the lines
What's fucked up and everything's alright
Check my vital signs
To know I'm still alive and I walk alone

My shadow's the only one that walks beside me
My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
'Til then I walk alone

I walk this empty street
On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Where the city sleeps
And I'm the only one and I walk a...

My shadow's the only one that walks beside me
My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
'Til then I walk alone...

And this is where I have been treading lately... down my own boulevard of broken dreams. Amongst the ruins of what might have been and what is now. I know my current life is not a 'bad' one. And I dearly love the family I have. But I did have a map once upon a time. A map with plans for the the journey I wanted to embark on. The journey of MY choice. One night, THAT night, changed my path forever as well as the lives of others. Destroying in a puff of smoke all the wonderful plans I had made. Rape. It has so much to answer for.

As I said, I know my life is not a miserable one and I do not view what I currently have as a consolation prize. In fact, I feel very lucky in many respects... but... I have come to the conclusion I am in mourning. Mourning the life I was on the cusp of living. The life I was so looking forward to. One that I had to completely turn my back on. Instead of denying this pain, of trying to block it, I am going to sit with it and hear it out. Face it with all the consequences that are likely to ensue. Maybe say good bye to the ghosts of so long ago... and take that next step. A step on the everlasting journey to healing...

... 'til then I walk alone...

Brilliant post

2010-03-08T01:35:00.003+11:00

I read this blogpost the other day and it is fabulous.

Ever since I came across the blogs of PAP's (Prospective adoptive parents) I have been horrifed by the use of God to justify adoption as it is practised today. This post puts the use of adoption in the bible into context. And again shows how God rejoices not in the separation of mother and child but in the relationship and bond between mother and child (biologically and naturally related of course) HE created.

I have never understood the logic of many PAP's... why would God cause the death of a mother when they have just had a baby just so other members of her family could squabble over who is going to adopt the baby when she is not yet buried? Why would God meddle like that? He wouldn't. And doesn't. Its not the way He works. Anyone who buys into this absolute crap is seriously, SERIOUSLY so blinded by their own tragedies and lust for what they desire they have lost the plot. Totally.

And to think that God would go around placing babies in the "wrong tummy", WTF is with that??? If that is what they believe then their god is seriously screwed up and not something I would want to have faith in. It would show He wasn't all perfect and all knowing. Yet again its just more evidence these deluded individuals will say anything to justify their actions to get another mother's child and play pretend.

Happy Birthday Amber-Rose

2010-02-17T21:42:00.002+11:00

It is now evening on the 17th of February.

Today was your birthday, your 12th Birthday.

Apparently, you got my presents in time; I hope you enjoy them.

As we do every year and have done since your first birthday, we sang happy birthday to you and blew out candles on your cake. One day, hopefully, we will do this and we will be together.

I love you. We all love you. May you always know how much you are loved, may you always be aware that we are here for you, the door always open to welcome you home should you desire to return. I will be waiting, with open arms.

Good-night beautiful girl and sweet dreams.

As always, love from your Mama xxx

4 days to go...

2010-02-14T03:34:00.002+11:00

There are still 4 days to go (or is it technically three?) until your birthday. And I have been sitting up for hours reliving those last days before our inevitable separation.

It seems the bank has finally broken again and I cannot stop crying.

I didn't want you to come out. You were safe inside me. We had such a strong connection; we even created our own method of communicating... close and together.

I can recall sitting in my bed, crying every night, telling you what everyone was telling me to do and what I wanted to do and I would try to do if I could (keep you).

And that is why I didn't want your birth to come. Because I couldn't keep you safe anymore. I couldn't keep you away from all those people who wanted me to "give" you away.

And so my baby girl, I stressed about it so much my body gave out and you came even earlier... instead of the beginning of April/end of March, you were born mid February. So now, February holds a bitter sweetness for me: I finally got to hold you... but it marked the beginning of the end of everything I knew up until then. The beginning of a new life of pain. The start of a journey filled with untold hardships, for both of us.

I could never say these things to you my beautiful girl. I would never want you to know how much pain this has caused. It is bad enough your sister sees any of it... I would hate you to see it as well.

12 years. 12 longs years. 12 short years.

I miss you. These three words convey so little but I do miss you. I missed you the morning of your birth as I lay in my hospital bed and you had been taken to the intensive care ward and it finally dawned on me you were no longer with me. My empty stomach. I can recall curling up and crying because I missed you from that moment on.

People don't realise that sometimes when I speak of our separation being violent I refer to the moment you were pulled out of me and rushed away. We had a traumatic time you and I as you struggled into the world and they almost lost me when everything slowed down. It was violent. And that is when our separation began.

I yearn for those days when I was pregnant with you. When you were safe, when we were together, when it was just you and I.

Now, 12 years on and all I have are the painful memories of that day. The pain at being told you were being placed for adoption despite the fact I hadn't even made that choice. The pain at having to demand and fight to see you, to touch you. Nothing was easy for us sweetheart... no one understood we were used to being together; we didn't like being apart.

One thing I still hold onto from the day of your birth... is when, despite being told you would not open your eyes for some days, you opened those beautiful blue eyes and stared straight into mine as I told you I was there, holding your hand.

I love you. I always have. Even when I found out I was pregnant, despite how you got there. I always will love you...

Love,
your Mama xxx

"Make Peace"

2010-02-07T09:14:00.004+11:00

I cannot tell you how many times I have heard this expression.

"I hope you make peace with your decision"

"I hope you find peace and can move on with your life"

"I hope you can let go of the hurt" etc etc and etc...

You get the picture.

What I have realised lately, is that these people often don't really care if I find peace or not. They don't want me to find peace for my sake. Oh no. They want me to find peace for THEIR sake because my voice makes THEM uncomfortable. And it is not just me but any other person who dares to speak out against the popular view of adoption.

There is an old saying I like which goes something along the lines of "People judge that which they don't understand". And judgement, dismissal etc is something of an epidemic in adoption.

You know something? I have made peace. Peace with the fact I know this pain can never be healed. Like the quote on the side of my blog from Frodo in the Return of the King, there are some hurts in life that can never be healed. Some wounds that go so deep they alter the whole of your life.

And so it is with that realisation I have made peace. This doesn't mean I do not have a life. But this blog is about one area of my life only and I do not need to defend the rest of my life to strangers who will never be part of my life.

Dismissing what I have to say only reflects on the person doing the dismissing. It has nothing to do with me except for the fact I challenge their safe little bubble (as do all who speak out against evil and wrongdoing where people chose blindness as it is more comfortable).

Dismissal is something I seem to be the brunt of more and more of late... especially here on my blog. From the ramblings of one pissed off lady because I don't like adoption and want it replaced by a more humane and just system (diddums) to raging emails about how my story is not true... these from people who are from a totally different country and have no clue as to who I am and what they are talking about. People so desperate to trample my voice they feel the need to dictate to me my experience and yet support my argument with their anger.

Peace... do people even know the meanings of the words they use these days? I wonder as they often say things with the opposite message attached...

Sigh....

2010-02-04T13:35:00.004+11:00

It has been brought to my attention that I have failed to link or mention where I found the quote at the centre of my "Love and Abandonemnt" post.

I didn't link it as I have seen what can happen with link backs and I didn't want to create friction on another blog or between blogs or any of the issues I have seen recently occur. So I apologise for being thoughtful, I should realise that is a quality not thought of too fondly these days.

I did have a link here but I am going to stand by what I originally felt. I am sorry if not linking back offends but I do it out of respect.

Responsibility

2010-02-01T10:23:00.005+11:00

Responsibility. It is a word that is tossed around a lot in adoption. “Take responsibility”.

I am very much in favour of people taking responsibility for their actions in life. Whatever they are. I feel if you choose to do something then you wear the consequences of that choice. It isn’t really rocket science, it is just logic.

However, there are also choices made in life that are not made by you but affect you in either profoundly negative or positive ways. Choices made by individuals for whatever reasons which carry consequences that can change the path of someone’s whole life journey.

For example, child abuse (physical, sexual or neglectful), the act of war, murder, rape, being given a large sum of money/inheritance, abduction and adoption to name a few.

All these examples are the result of one or many persons making a choice and that choice altering someone’s life substantially.

Given this blog is about adoption, I want to talk about responsibility in adoption.

Over the past few years and indeed in very recent days, I have often had the odd person tell me to take responsibility for my actions in regards to my daughter’s adoption. And there are things within this experience I do take responsibility for such as being naive, trusting those who could not be trusted, wanting to do what was right, being worn down etc.

But that is not what they mean. I have been told to take responsibility for getting pregnant. But how can I when I was raped? When I said no and tried to stop my daughter’s biological father from hurting me, I took responsibility. I. SAID. NO. After this, it was not MY choice and therefore NOT my responsibility. So no, I do not take responsibility for being raped and becoming pregnant and neither should any other woman.

When I discovered I was pregnant, in a state of shock, I had to make a choice as to what I would do with my child. For me, abortion was not an option. It was not something I personally felt or feel comfortable with. Adoption was offered to me next and I immediately said “No way, I am not giving my child away”. And then I opted to parent. It was the logical choice. I was pregnant and at the end of that pregnancy I would be a mother. What do mothers do with their children? They raise them. It was fairly simple to me.

However, what I was unaware of then, is that apparently, this wasn’t my choice to make. Raising my own child somehow became everyone else’s business but mine and what I had to say didn’t matter. I had no idea that my community, my whole support network would turn on me this way and that their choice was more important.
Yes, I made the choice to listen to these people who were supposed to be my elders, protectors and people who cared about me. Yes, I chose to trust them... why wouldn’t I? Yes, I chose to look into the choice (adoption) they presented to me to get them off my back. Hardly a crime.

What I was unprepared for is the choices each individual would make in relation to my child and I. Their choices, which in most cases I believe were made not out of malice but out of ignorance, had dire consequences for us.

On to the adoption part. I am told that regardless of what anyone else said to me, it was still my signature on those consent papers. No one held a gun (well at least not physically) to my head, no one forged my signature. This is true and again, I accept this. I did sign those papers however much I didn’t want to.

But here is where I stop taking responsibility and I don’t care who disagrees with me because, and let me make this clear to you, I WAS THERE, I WAS THE ONE THIS HAPPENED TO. Not you. So unless you have walked a mile in MY shoes, have experienced what I went through then you have no say in this and your opinion counts for nought.

Adoption was NOT MY choice. I chose to parent so I do not take responsibility for “making” that choice. I didn’t then and I will not today or any other day. My story has not changed. I was never in the fog about adoption being “the best for my child” because I never believed it was. You just have to ask those who were there and knew me well to know that.

Signing that consent? Yes, biggest regret of my life and I have beaten myself up about it over and over. But although there was no physical gun, there was an emotional one. I was wrongly informed if I DIDN’T sign, the consent could be signed by someone else, our “Chief executive” (formerly Director-General) and I would lose her anyway. Where was the choice in that? Sign or have her taken away regardless. No choice, therefore nothing to take responsibility FOR.

But even if I didn’t make the choice to place her, I definitely made the choice to parent her clear. And I definitely took responsibility for that. How? I FOUGHT for MY child. I went to court and I fought for her. And, my first court battle, I won. Yes, I won. So, how did my daughter end up where she is? BECAUSE OF THE CHOICES OF OTHERS. Her adopters. They decided to fight to take her away from me and the rest of her family so yes, I lay that choice, the responsibility for the end result SQUARELY on their shoulders because that is where it belongs.

Often, I see mothers told to take responsibility for the actions of others. No one wants to believe our stories because we threaten and challenge the incorrect view the general public holds on adoption. Validating our experiences means others have to face THEIR responsibilities for the choices THEY made and that is just too much for most. So we get told we have to take responsibility for the choices OTHERS made. We are told to apologise to our children for abandoning them despite the fact many of us never had a choice and some of us did what we could to keep our children. Who apologises for something they didn’t do? Why is it expected for mothers to do this when others are not expected to?

I have seen mothers from the Baby Scoop Era denied their stories as being true, that they created and invented their experience just to make excuses for losing their child. This is preposterous. For one, most of these mothers had no idea how wide spread this issue was given the secrecy of the era and their own MEDICAL RECORDS prove their stories not to mention the testimonies of those who worked in the hospitals and saw this occur with their own eyes.

Even Nancy Verrier in her book Primal Wound expects mothers to apologise to their adult children for placing them. As an adoptive parent, that is easy for her to say. It excuses her from being part of the demand that continues the growth of the adoption industry. It is her and other adoptive parents who used their thousands of dollars in so-called fees to obtain an infant who should be apologising to their child for not using that money more wisely and helping them stay within their family. It would have been cheaper!

I am all for telling my daughter I am sorry she FELT abandoned and the pain that caused her but I will not take responsibility for what her adopters and others did to me to ensure my child and I were separated. Why should I? Just to make you sleep easier at night? Take a hike.

What I can take responsibility for is getting my story out there. I can be responsible for ensuring stories like mine do not keep being repeated. I can take responsibility for how this tragic event impacts my life and I do. I have. Take this blog for instance, it is where I can share my pain, my anguish in a healthy way that dosn't impact my family. If I DIDN'T blog, DIDN'T speak up, I would be guilty of NOT taking responsibility and the pain would swallow me so much I would be of no use to my family. In venting, sharing my pain and feelings here, I free myself of these emotions so I am available for my other two precious children. To ignore the need for me to blog, would be an injustice to my family.

Responsibility. Its a big word. Maybe before you judge me and talk to me about responsibility perhaps you should learn what it means and either walk a mile in my shoes or take responsibility for your own actions in life.

Love and abandonment

2010-01-28T01:03:00.006+11:00

Earlier today whilst reading comments regarding "A Primal Wound", I found this quote in a comment by an adoptive father who claimed it was the best he'd ever heard:

“If I loved my child any less, I'd still have him with me.”

I was repulsed. Utterly and completely repulsed. This is the same vitrol, the very same lie I heard over and over again like a mantra during my days in hospital after declaring I would raise my child.

A manipulation of the very worst kind, to abuse the love a mother has for her child so that she would rip their relationship to shreds for the sake of another family to be created. Just vile.

This comment has been in my head all day and I am angry. Angry this lie is still being used to lure mothers into placing their babies with strangers. Angry that people still live in this bubble. Angry that anyone could believe such a lie.

It makes a mockery of all other parents who choose to raise their children themselves. It negates Nature and the normal methods of building a family (yes, that's right, I don't view adoption as a normal way of buliding a family).

This ghastly quote goes hand in hand with the concept that a mother who chooses to raise her own child is selfish and only looking out for her own needs. No you dumb idiots, its NATURAL... you know, the normal way of life to have a baby and then raise them. Again, this is where we see hypocrisy in adoption raise its head. It is expected for a mother wearing a wedding band with a comfortable home with all the materialistic trappings to give birth and keep her child. This is accepted and expected. Take away all these things and suddenly a mother who does not have these things is different somehow. The only way she can prove her love seemingly, is to abandon her child to others to raise. Keep the baby and she is labelled selfish and told she is showing how little she loves her own baby.

What a dirty, evil lie. Manipulative. Cruel. Warped. Twisted.

Love cannot be judged by what house you have, how much money you have in the bank account. I have witnessed mothers who have nothing but a bed and a piece of tarpulin for a home, parent. They loved their child just as much as any rich Westerner and love is not measured by the things we have. Giving away your child only sends one message to your child: You didn't want me and you don't love me. My daughter's adopters have told my daughter (albeit all lies) that I gave her up because I loved her so much blah blah blah but HER EXPERIENCE despite having all the so called love this person goes on about, she still feels abandoned and unloved by me, her mother... I know because she told me. So this lie has caused pain not only to me, but to HER. All the love in the world from bilogical strangers is never going to take THAT pain away. She needs to feel MY love, the truth of our bond.

To all young expectant mothers out there who are scared and concerned and have no idea what to do... please do not fall for this lie. Keeping your child is the NATURAL thing to do and should be your first option. Giving up your baby has nothing to do with love at all, it is all about desperation and fear. For most mothers, it is not even a choice that enters their heads... don't be fooled by the industry driven dribble that will tell you to prove your love by handing your baby, your flesh and blood who knows and wants only you, to strangers. I am not saying they wouldn't love your baby... but it isn't about that really at the end of the day. Anyone, any person in their right frame of mind would want a child to stay with his or her mother. Infant adoption survives on the lie that if you love your child you will give them away... translation: abandon your child so we can fill a quota. No love in that equation.

If I followed this senseless logic, this vile lie, my husband and I would have given up my other two children when they were born. But we didn't BECAUSE WE LOVE THEM. DOH!

As Joss Shawyer indicates in her book "Death by Adoption", a mother is told to give her child up because she loves him/her but what no one tells her is that if she really loves him/her, she would keep them. And I agree. Adoption from the perspective of the infant and his or her mother is the most UNNATURAL thing and is against everything in their world of normality. This relationship is created strong for a reason and nothing and nobody is meant to come between them. There is research done on this topic to prove what I say... research to prove that a bond between a mother and the child she has given birth to is deeper than just biology.

Someone once told me that adoption was natural because it happens in the animal kingdom. Actually, that is another lie. Adoption is a human legality that severs bilogical relationships. As animals do not have a legal system, adoption in their "kingdom" is non-existent. There is no such thing as adoption to an animal. Sure, there are stories about a kitten being raised by a pack of dogs or some sort of thing but this isn't adoption. Oh no. That is just an example of another species caring for an abandoned/orphaned creature. It has nothing to do with legalties, manipulating a mother to place her child because she "loves" them etc. It is purely an example of what we as a human race should be doing: looking out for the weaker ones and supporting them until they are strong again.

Sadly, the human race is more content on kicking our weaker members of our race while they are down, heck I have even had that very confession from an adoptress out of her own fingers. The role (according to some disillusioned/twisted members of the human race) of mankind is NOT to support those in need but to benefit from the pain and suffering of others. Enter adoption as a prime example.

So yeah. Loving a child so much you give him/her away? Nup. Doesn't work for me and most people living in the real world.

Please check out Cassi's, Jenni's and Mei-Ling's blogs for different perspectives on this issue. Each of them have eloquently offered another inside look into what these words mean to them.

New Blog

2010-01-24T17:53:00.003+11:00

Last night I was introduced to a new blog written by a 14 year old adoptee. I read several of her posts, tears streaming down my face, tingles crawling up and down my spine. Her words echoed in my head all night and I just wanted to hold her and tell her how very sorry I am this happened to her.

My daughter will be 12 very soon. All I can say is I hope she feels about me the way this young girl feels about her mother. I wish I could let Amber know she is not alone... share this blog with her to show her there are others out there who understand.

I was going to post the link here but sadly I know there are some people out there who would like to go and visit her and tell her how to feel and what to feel. She doesn't need that because she is living her experience. She knows how she feels.

Anyway... just wanted to share what was on my mind.

What does it mean to you?

2010-01-09T10:10:00.005+11:00

With all the various "blog wars" flying about the place, I have been thinking about the "anti-adoption" stance and the way people feel towards it.

I didn't always see myself as being anti-adoption; in fact someone labelled me with that and I just thought "well maybe that's what I am" and let it stick but currently, I have seen through the eyes of others, that this statement is more than what it means to me.

So in this post, I want to explain what I see it meaning and then ask you what you feel it means.

For me:

I am against a legal system that seeks to make a lie out of a child's life. I do not agree with the legal process and is one of the main aspects of adoption I am against. It is not even a requirement to tell a child they are adopted and I know of mothers whose children are not even aware of their adoption. This is crazy-making. I hate that in many places in the USA, adopted persons do not have the right to THEIR OWN records. I am against withholding Original Birth Certificates from those they belong to: the Adoptee and no one else. Not even the mother who gave birth to them has the moral right to keep this information from their child and if they loved their child, they wouldn't.

The other main aspect is the routine separation of mothers and babies to fulfil a demand. Infant adoption has become a business. Mothers who are perfectly capable of raising their own children are told they are selfish, are lied to, are worn down to feel they are unworthy of keeping their own babies, the most natural thing to do, so that others can adopt their babies. I disagree with this and find it unethical and immoral in the extreme.

I disagree with the kidnapping of children internationally being sold for adoption and human traffiking purposes. I am against keeping the poor helpless and unable to provide so they have no choice but to relinquish in order to feed their own children.

I am against the fact adoption is a multi billion dollar FOR profit industry in the USA. This issue makes me feel sick because I do not see how this is any different to slavery when a price is paid to adopt an infant under the guise of "fees" when in reality it is contributing to the profits this industry is generating.

I am vehemently opposed to those who aggressively seek out young mothers with the sole intention of getting them to place their child. Adoption should be a last resort not the first choice. Education should be employed to ensure more young women know how to protect themselves from becoming mothers before they are ready. There is just not enough education out there due to sex being such a taboo subject in the West.

I am against infant adoption because in most cases it is not ethical and is immoral due to current practises employed and the lure of the open adoption lie which has no guarantee and has so far caused much damage.

Now I have covered the main aspects of adoption I am against, let me share what I am actually okay with.

All children deserve a permanent and stable home; a family who loves them. I agree with this aspect of adoption although sadly, it is not always guaranteed. Children should not have to pass from home to home; should not have to worry about who they are going to live with next, whether they are going to be placed back with abusive parents. Children, our innocent and precious children, deserve to be loved, nurtured and above all, protected and I know there are people out there who want to give a child this which is GOOD.

Children who have no homes and no chance of being reunited with their familes, I want them to have a home. I want them to have what children are SUPPOSED to have, their basic human rights.

This is where adoption, particularly of older children, I struggle to be against as their right to this is more important than paperwork. And for the most part, where and whilst there is no other choice, I agree currently adoption is their best option.

Now for you my readers, I invite you to share what ANTI ADOPTION means to you. What do you feel or think when you see this term? What does this term really mean?

Please be aware this is not an invitation for attacks, jibes, etc but a civil and meaningful discussion so we can dispel some of the myths going around about what anti adoption is and what it isn't.

Maybe we will find within the adoption community more common ground with each other than we realise we have.

Thank you for your honesty and time!

Okay, enough really is enough.

2010-01-07T12:10:00.007+11:00

Recently, just before the crap with Tracey from her insecurities etc, I had issues with another blog.

I was accused of calling the author of this above blog "horrible" and sending people over to call her names. WTF???

I took issue with one of her posts listing reasons why adoption happens less often and why she hasn't got a baby yet, this paragraph in particular:

"6. Adoption is the hardest option. Many people are to selfish to consider adoption for their child. It is to hard... it comes with pain and consequence for poor judgement. No one gives you a party when you choose to place your baby for adoption. No one celebrates the selfless decision being made. Many people feel it is easier to terminate the pregnancy and "be done with it" than it is to give that child a chance at a good life because it requires the birth mother to suffer the grief of losing her baby..."

And this is what I commented:

"I am another who is outraged with this post. Seriously, calling mothers who chose to rraise their own children selfish, what is that?

From some of the comments supporting you, I get that you have been through much pain and anguish to get to this point. As someone who is suffering in a completely different way I wanted to say I am very sorry for the pain you have been through.

But please, realise being part of a demand that causes more pain in another persons's life is not going to fix you. Adopting is not a guarantee you are going to have the family you want. You will never have the child you dreamt of, that is really sad, devastating but going into adoption with the expectation to adopt a child to help fill this spot is, I am sorry to say, cruel. Cruel to the child, cruel to the child's mother and cruel to yourselves.

Adoption today has become about wants, not needs. It is a new form of materialism. You pay and get a baby: to me that is not about helping anyone but one's self. While you are waiting for the classes to start, I would suggest you read Nancy Verrier's "Primal Wound". She is an adoptive parent as well but she does raise some very valid points. I get that you might not be open to learning about the pain adoption causes others but if you are going to contribute to that then the least you can do is read a book."

Hardly nasty.

Around this time I wrote my post The sickness that is adoption about a series of blogs I had read regarding people feeling entitled to another mother's baby and from comments I had seen to other mothers on THEIR blogs about how they feel about adoption. I had had enough and so I shared how I felt and then, added the link to the above blog because it upset me so much than anyone could feel that a mother who births her own child could be selfish just because despite she is going through a difficult time she doesn't choose adoption. When it became apparent that Mrs D was very upset about this, I APOLOGISED for causing her pain as that wasn't my intention and took the link away. The post was never about her, just how fed up I am with adoption and how sick I find it. My blog, I can post what I want just as much as Mrs D is given freedom to post on hers. The door swings both ways.

I am allowed to have an opinion and so I stated how I felt.

This author then believed I had called her names and sent people to her blog to call her names and so despite my comments to the contrary her little following decided to attack not what I said but me as a person and even the validity of my story.

And now, today, it has been brought to my attention it is still continuing with a comment directed toward me about being mentally ill.

I want to address this situation because it has gone on long enough and like anyone else, I do not like being painted in a way that is nothing like me.

Mrs D, I never called you horrible or judged you as a horrible person for wanting to adopt. I don't think you or your husband are awful people for wanting to be a parent. That is natural and whether you want to believe me or not, I DO have empathy for people in your situation as I have friends and close relatives who have been through much pregnancy loss and trying for YEARS to conceive (some up to 15) and I have seen how traumatising it is. I would never judge anyone for wanting to parent, to think that I would is not to know me.

But for me, there is a point where the empathy for this ends IF the person then turns to seek a resolution to THEIR pain by causing pain for someone else. What I have seen and experienced as a result of adoption is horrific. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. There have been several trials in my life which is why I have been diagnosed with PTSD but adoption has been by far the most painful.

I am not a "woeful/misrable/negative" person in real life. In fact, away from adoption (and yes, I do have a life away from this blog and world) I am seen as an optimistic and cheerful person. But then your commentors would know that if they really knew me and they don't so I cannot understand where half the vile comments come from.

To support someone going through a very hard time is one thing but to dismiss and put someone down because they don't agree with something that was said is on another level of low altogether.

I am not posting this for people to go over and mock Mrs D, put her down or call her names. In fact, I do not feel anything is gained by that. You yourself Mrs D posted on another blog how you are a decent person. If this is true, then please put an end to the attacks. Please show the compassion and empathy for others I HAVE shown you and you expect to receive and end it.

One small point...

2010-01-06T12:00:00.008+11:00

I am anti-adoption. Shocking, isn't it? I am against a LEGAL FICTION that only cares about finding infants for families who cannot, for whatever reason, have their own.

Yes, I want to see ADOPTION abolished but what so many of my recent readers have missed is this: adoption is a legal fiction. Get it? It isn't real, just in legal terms. Besides all the other crap that comes with adoption, the act of adopting is, to create a lie. So why is wanting that practise abolished such an issue? I would think those who are advocating the welfare of children and who want openness and truth would also want this. But to change THIS point would mean adoption no longer exists because that is essentially what adoption is about. That is what to adopt means in legal terms. Duh.

When you adopt a baby, a second BIRTH certificate is created. The original, the real one is hidden away and the person who it belongs to in some places of this world, is not even allowed access to it, which is criminal. On the new birth certificate, a legal document which is supposed to state the parents who gave birth (hence why it is called a birth certificate), in place of the parents who actually brought this baby into the world, the names of the adopters are entered as if the child was born to them. This is a lie. And that is what adoption, at the cold heart of the matter, is all about. When you strip away everything to its core, and are left with only the legal process, this is what you get. Take this away, and adoption as a legality, essentially no longer exists and THAT is what I want. Adoption, in effect through a legal process, creates an alternate reality for a child, one that is backed up by a lie.

So if you want adoption reform and you do not agree with birth certificates being altered to reflect a legal lie, we are on the same page more than you realise. As far back as anicent Roman days, this is how adoption worked so if we were to change this fact, adoption itself could no longer exist because this is the main point OF adoption... to create a legal fiction.

Obviously, there is more than just this I want removed but that is all the cruelty humans have inflicted upon their fellow humankind out of greed and lust and actually have nothing to do with the actual act of adoption itself. Its just adoption has been and is still being used to carry out these evil actions on people. Adoption is basically a slave to those who weild it as a weapon, a legal whore so to speak. But really, at the end of the day, we get rid of what adoption is actually about in terms of the law, we can get rid of adoption itself and then we can deal with the cruelty people have used it for and focus on the children who are supposed to be, but have never been, at the heart of it.

And yes, I would want something else in its place for the stability and permanency of children who NEED care but not ownership and not any of the other barbaric and cruel deeds that have been practised in the name of adoption.

Just wanted to point that one out as I think this has been missed in all the hoopla.

Adoption at its very best

2010-01-05T11:11:00.006+11:00

A few weeks ago, I posted on the topic of Adoption being a sick institution which has generated the feedback which only confirmed this (gotta love it when idiots are so blind and ignorant they back up what you say) and now, as further confirmation of this, there is a woman who feels SO threatened by my very existence she feels the need to attack me, my experience and the things I have to say about adoption.

So I am going to allow her and I no longer feel the need to justify what I have said as, after a further reading of what she and some of her commenters have said, I can see these people are just ignorant people who are the reason the adoption industry keeps ticking over. OF COURSE people like me threaten them. Because what I (and countless others) say so hits them in the middle of the chest she has to find a way to discredit all of us. The thing is, she has nothing to back her up save the desire to parent. The rest of what she says is emotional BS with absolutely no rational thought or reason to it.

I am not going anywhere and neither are the adoption reform and anti adoption groups. I think its funny that she thinks only people with bad experiences are anti-adoption because I know people not even involved in adoption who I have had heated debates with and now understand EXACTLY what about adoption it is I want gone. I have found people who have had no experience with adoption save professionally who do not agree with it based on principal.

Anyone who thinks it is okay to further the abuse of children through the institution of adoption is not right in the head and so I wash my hands of her. She and her little following are just ignorant, hypocritical people who couldn't have children and so made another family pay the price for their desires.

I do not need to justify my opinions to anyone. My experience did not blind me, it opened my eyes to a world that is very sad, dark and full of pain. The only ones who benefit in adoption are adopters and yet I know more than a handful of adoptive parents now who feel just as strongly as I do about adoption being wrong. Why? Because these people have SEEN with open hearts and minds the effect adoption has. They have felt the pain their adopted children have suffered and because they REALLY love them for who they are, they have sought help and realised adoption wasn't what they thought it was and feel they were lied to.

I have recently witnessed some of the worst of human nature thanks to adoption. Vile attacks, language, wild and unfounded accusations, threats, dictatorship etc all thanks to adoption. Don't these advocates for adoption realise all they are doing is confirming how sick adoption is? And what I mean, is adoption is ill. It has become such a repulsive and disgusting institution that has caused so much damage theroughout the world it really needs to be called to account for how it has been used.

Anyway, bash me and my blog all you like. But know this: regardless of how wrong you want to make me look, no matter how much you want to dismiss what I say, the truth will remain about how repugnant adoption is. This is not just my story. I am just one of countless mothers around the world who knows adoption for what it really is and we are not going anywhere. And then there are those who are supposed to matter the most, the ones adoption was supposed to be about, the adoptees. Currently, unless they agree with adoption and speak its lies, they are shoved away, labelled and basically ignored. Again, only more proof adoption was about adopters and not them.

The more pain that comes out of adoption, the stronger our cause will become until the rest of the ignorant population have no choice but to hear us. In the meantime, countless mothers and children will fall prey to this evil; countless mothers and their children will fall victim to the selfish wants of another couple who cannot deal with their lot in life.

And the crap just keeps on coming...

2010-01-05T01:04:00.005+11:00

Seriously.

This woman has such a bee in her bonnet about what I have to say she feels the need to post exerpts from my blog all over hers. And then tries to combat it but... with what exactly? Nothing she has said has effectively given any valid or slightly intellectual reason for adoption to continue.

Firstly, her biblical skills are sadly lacking and she manipulates "God's will" into being her will. There is no mention of Moses' adoptive mother going with him in Exodus and it is his real brother Aaron God chose to accompany him to challenge Pharoah, a member of Moses' adoptive family. So yes, it WAS at God's behest that Moses went AGAINST the house he came from and led his own people, the Israelites, NOT his adoptive family who were Egyptians, out of Egypt.

It is very easy to dismiss things I say because I am apparently blinded by my pain and lies to fit in with your agenda. I have done research on American adoption agencies and open adoption and there is no mention anywhere of how open adoption is not legally binding therefore being misleading. Many mothers I know in America have discovered, their open adoption which was slammed shut in their face was never real in the first place. So yes, contrary to what she says about open adoptions, they are a huge scam and are fraudulent because they mislead intentionally.

About the BSE, just because we are not in the 1950's now, it doesn't mean women are not being tricked out of their newborns. It doesn't mean that behind the scenes, babies are being coerced and forced out of their mother's arms. Just because she has no idea about how often it is happening doesn't mean it DOESN'T happen. And not just in America (She obviously has no clue that America is not the only country in the world). She has very flawed logic.

Um, this woman is so daft she cannot see that adoption is the root cause for much evil in the world thus making any little bit of good it MIGHT do moot. She is so blind to anyone else's pain and heartbreak she ignores the thousands of mothers, fathers and children world wide that have suffered as a result of adoption. Because it makes her sleep better at night to put her fingers in her ears, close her eyes and pretend all is just a-ok.

So I look forward to the valid reasons she has to offer that don't mention abuse, neglect or poverty as all these can be looked after without adoption, as to why adoption is good enough to continue.

This woman offers no evidence to back up any of her crazy theories, she offers no validity to her argument. She is just, at the end of the day, an adopter looking to bring someone down for daring to challenge her little bubble where she clings to the fantasy of adoption being "wonderful"

Oh please. Pass me the puke bucket.

Some people...

2010-01-04T12:29:00.005+11:00

Wow, it has been a heavy few days.

Apparently, unless you agree with someone unequivocally these days you have no right to speak on a blog without having a vile tirade unleashed on you.

I get that my opinion on adoption is unpopular. I know, believe me I know. But what I and many other mothers and adoptees have to say is no less important and in some ways it is more important as we are highlighting an issue that has gone unrecognised for so long.

It is not my fault some women cannot get pregnant. It really isn't. It isn't my fault either that I can, its just the way things played out. I do have empathy for these people who are not able to conceive but here is where that empathy ends. When a woman decides her pain is more valid than anyone else's and, regardless of what anyone says, decides to go ahead and make a child and his or her mother pay the price. When, despite seeing the pain of another person, she dismisses it and continues to look out only for herself. I have no empathy for the women who do this and they do not deserve empathy because out of their greed and desire, they have made the choice to sacrifice another family so they can get what they want.

As a teenager, my best friend and I decided we would like to adopt instead of give birth as we felt there were so many children who needed us. We were both living overseas and fell for the American idea of adoption (she is American). Arriving back into my home country which is vastly different to America (thankfully) I was slowly introduced to a new version of adoption, one which is never exposed in the general media stream and as I have previously mentioned I started to question the status quo.

I started to see documentaries made by groups advocating human rights that showed the lies of International adoption and I decided if I ever discovered I would not be able to have children naturally, and that fear was very real, I would not adopt but look into foster care instead. So yes, in answer to an email I received, no I would never have adopted faced with infertility as I had made that decision BEFORE I was raped and discovered I was pregnant with my daughter.

I find it sad that in disagreeing with the opinion that mothers are selfish for wanting to raise their own children, I have been accused of lashing out to cause pain. I do not need to do that, the pain is already there and adoption is only furthering that pain.

Some of my lovely new readers have taken issue with the fact I find adoption sick, depraved and vile. The funny this is, all the recent attacks I have received with accusations about my intentions and those who have tried to dictate my own story to me, all this has done is shown adoption brings out the worst in human nature confirming the statements I have previously made about adoption being sick. If adoption was so loving and caring as so many want to force me to believe, why is there so much hatred around? As mentioned in a previous post, I have never encountered as much poison, nastiness, cruelty I have experienced until I was introduced to adoption. This just does not just apply to the blogs I read which want to make pregnant women pay the price for being able to conceive without hassles, but the vast areas adoption covers including International Adoption, child traffiking and selling, illegal and fraudulent domestic adoptions and the list goes on.

I do care about children. That has been my whole life. I am sick of the way people use children as pawns in their games, sick of seeing them used as nothing. That is part of the reason I want to see adoption abolished. Because it is based on adults needs and not those of the children. I want to see past the narrow confines of the boxes we are put in and think outside the square to develop a system that is focussed on the child's needs.

It is ludicrous in the extreme to believe I want children kept with abusive parents and NO WHERE on my blog have I ever stated that but what I find hilarious is that those who accuse me of this are so hypocritical that they do not line up to adopt these children themeslves. No, they are lining up in thousands to adopt a womb fresh infant. A baby they can try to pretend is theirs and theirs alone. This is not about children, this is about a person who cannot accept their lot in life and I don't give a damn if that "disturbs" some of you out there. It should. Because this is about tearing families apart, NOT building a family. Don't PAP's get the fact that in order to satisfy THEIR demand, they need to make a baby miss out on what was meant for them? Adoption IS second best; not for the adopter maybe BUT for the infant they adopt, yes it is because babies are born to the mother's they are meant to grow up with. They are not born to be adopted. That sort of mentality is so twisted.

I agree with children being removed from violent and abusive homes. From homes where they are being neglected. My husband is the victim of neglect abuse as well as the fact he grew up in a violent home. He was never removed and I have had to pick up the pieces of this and together we have worked on this. But he doesn't wish he had been adopted. He doesn't see how an extreme action would have made his life any different. Yes, he would have liked a family life that wasn't dysfunctional but as he has said, it was still HIS family and he loved his grandparents and adoption would have removed them from his life as well as other things he has loved about his life. Adoptees who say they were lucky they were adopted but have no knowledge of their origins have no idea if they were lucky or not. No one holds it against them they love their adoptive families, that is to be expected. But to promote adoption when they have NO clue about what their life could have been is just silly.

When I say adoption is sick I refer to all the evil, trauma, cruelty and pain it has caused. Maybe sick is just not a good word for it because it goes beyond being sick.

Removing adoption will not cause a huge problem in our world, especially if there was a new system in place ready to go focussed solely on helping the children and giving homes to children who actually need them. The world moved on without slavery okay and we would move on without adoption as well.

And so it begins... welcome to 2010!

2010-01-03T16:58:00.005+11:00

So I expected to have a few more days away from blogging but here I am again.

A few days ago, I noticed a sudden increase in traffic to my blog and at first thought it was from another blog only to discover a new blog which had not only dedicated a whole post to yours truly but several other bloggers I know.

This person finds the fact that there are actually people in this world who are against ripping apart families for the sake of another's greed, shocking. She finds the fact I would stand against such evil "disturbing" and while feigning to having empathy (seriously, I doubt many adopters and PAP's know the meaning of this word or how it feels to have empathy) she attempts to challenge, very poorly might I add, everything I have to say.

First, she links to my story and a paper I wrote to try and give her readers an idea of where I am coming from... to qualify her as being empathetic. However, with the rest of her post, she swipes all that away by moving on to attack anything else I have said since. Keeping in mind she is an adopter, I am not surprised but I do have a 'few' things to say in response.

Given the fact she DID NOT adopt from foster care, she is not qualified to speak of that side of adoption... after all if she wasn't lusting after a womb fresh infant, adopting from foster care would have been her only option.

She is such an emapthetic, caring person, supposedly a christian who does not see it as her human duty to the race of humanity to support or care for anyone in their time of need. Watch out anyone who dares to be in dire need for this is the sort of person who will, without hesitation, kick you while you are down.

She sees women and mothers who are not educated and do not have financial backing as nobodies who do not deserve to parent their own child. She states:"I do not think that mother's who have no education or financial where-with-all should be "made" to keep children, possible from rape, that were unwanted." If she was the good christian woman she would have some of use believe, her first step would be to try and ensure these people became educated and then give them a chance. But no! That would mean she wouldn't get her baby so we can't have that now can we! The story of the good Samaritan springs to mind... this adoptress is the same as those who saw the dying man on the side of the road and didn't even bother to give him the time of day. No, this woman is devoid of empathy, care, compassion and sympathy as her next statement backs up:

"I do not think that I should have to "support" you. You are the one choosing to keep your child and if you really don't have the means to do so, maybe this isn't the best choice. I do believe in charity, but if adoption was abolished I think "the system" would be OVERFLOWING with those needing "support." "

Yeah, such a loving person we have here!

Next she has a go at the Code of Hammurabi itself! Honey, I didn't write that Code, it has been around for a very, very long time and if you had actually read the post properly, you would see what you are attacking is the Code itself, from a translation by the Rev. Claude Hermann Walter Johns, M.A. Litt.D. For a teacher, we have a few issues with comprehension!

Despite this industry making $3 billion dollars in profit per year in just the USA alone, she doesn't feel that illegal, forced adoptions are the norm. Because maybe in her little bubble where mothers just go giving away their babies, its not (Rolling eyes) but then her little world consists of herself and her pro adoption gang so she would have no idea of the reality out there would she.

She then goes on to argue with pretty much anything she can. She feels more qualified than the high number of professionals dating back from the 1940's who have researched neo and pre natal psychology and dismisses their research that states babies are not blank slates at birth. Coming from an adopter though, I am not surprised. She doesn't want to think the child she adopted, another MOTHER'S son might have actually bonded to his mother while he grew inside her. She glances over foster care adoption and basically thumbs her nose at it... it didn't give her what she wanted fast enough and given it was about reuniting families (shock, horror) she decided against that.

Basically, she has nicely confirmed everything I posted about here for which I thank her. She has yet again proven the lack of compassion and empathy for women who find themselves stuck between a rock and adoption aka a hard place. Afterall, she says it herself. Its not HER job to help a fellow human being by giving her some support. No, God forbid you turn to her and seek her help... I wouldn't want to be even a dog needing a help with this sort of heartless woman around.

As for abolishing adoption... yes, damn well right I want it gone. Why wouldn't I? Afterall, if she is the sort of person adoption breeds then yes, it needs to go. Anyone who supports adoption is supporting the abuse of human rights. Quite clearly and I have explained this before (for those who atcually know how to read). Adoption has gone beyond the realm of being sick.

It seeks to destroy, to maim, to cause pain. Agencies trawl the streets, Dr's rooms, universities, schools etc searching for vulnerable women to lie to. They proudly boast to their paying clients, adopters, that they 'aggressively market' to meet their demand. These babies that are being adopted, infants, already have mothers. They already have fathers. They already have extended families. With a bit of support, they would be able to STAY in their families where nature and God intended they were meant to be.

The whole BS about God pre-destining children to be adopted... I have never seen and read such utter crap in my life. God doesn't go around placing babies in the wombs of their mothers only to tear them away and anyone, ANYONE who thinks this is in dire need of a head check.

Bringing God into the equation of adoption is a cop out. Usually done by people who know their Bible so little they go off what is said by the media and their churches. For if they knew their Bible inside out, they would see God is totally against tearing up families. Moses was a very good example as in the end, Moses turned AGAINST the family he was raised by, as directed by God. Not to mention the rest of adoption in the Bible.

The woman who wrote that other blog claims to have done research but I have found not one piece of evidence to support her claims. Her arguments have no merit and are completely illogical.

She writes me off because I have had a "bad experience", well listen up lady, it was not just a bad experience, she was (and still is) MY CHILD. A human being, my flesh and blood and yes, she was stolen from me and yes, this happens MORE than you would want to believe. Why do you think it happens? Because selfish women like yourself need to be fulfilled. It wasn't MY or any other mother's job to have a baby for you or any other infertile couple. You can live in your pathetic little bubble of make believe where everything looks rosy through your blinkers but NOTHING you say will ever change the truth about adoption, the real truth. Truth is solid, like rock. Something is either a lie or it is truth.

The reality of adoption is that it has caused more pain than good and as such, because we are meant to be living in a world with a moral and ethical code, it NEEDS to go. I have never said abolish adoption and then left it at that. I do have alternatives and as some already exist here in Australia, it proves it can work if people put their minds to it. The only reason adoption continues today is because it is fuelled by lust and money. Adopters create a demand and those agencies fulfil it. Women don't willy nilly give up their babies and so with the help of all that cash coming in, the media help fuel the negativity society feels about young mothers keeping their babies. It COULD be using all that money to help educate young women and men how to not get pregnant, how to look after themselves and not end up having issues... but no, it doesn't because that would be of no benefit to the agencies and the clients who are paying the money. Adoption has become a new form of slavery, and like slavery, it should be abolished and replaced by a system which only cares for children who NEED it and not provide babies for women who can't have them naturally.

Happy New Year!

2010-01-01T01:18:00.003+11:00

Well 2010 has just hit us here... well an hour or so ago and I just wanted to wish everyone a very Happy 2010.

As usual, the Sydney fireworks were spectacular and I am happy to be living in one of the best cities in the world.

Now I just have to write out my resolutions and hopefully make realistic goals I can stick too! Hahaha, that should be fun :) It will be the first year in a very long time I would have made an actual list!

Adoption related posting will be back soon... I just wanted to take a break over the Christmas/New Year season as it is such a heavy and depressing topic and I actually wanted to enjoy my holiday season (shock, horror) LOL.

HAPPY NEW YEAR to everyone!

Myst xxx

Coming to a close

2009-12-21T13:24:00.004+11:00

Whew! What a year this has been. I am happy it is coming to a close in some respects and yet it will be sad as it has been a big year within our family unit.

This year, Noodle started big school. It was huge for us as a family... finally being able to be part of this day as we were not able to for Amber. Noodle enjoyed herself immensely. She is very bright which has confronted us with its own challenges but over all, she loves school, loves her friends, loves the learning, the buzz of being part of a classroom. She has blossomed from a pre-schooler; from my baby into an independent little soul with very defined opinions about the way the world works and her role in it. She has become so responsible and in some ways, having to let go of the last baby days has been heartbreaking for me. To have to watch her walk away, not needing me as she one did. My baby girl, the one I got to mother, the one I got to keep like mothers are supposed to and she is no longer my baby. This has been hard for me and yet I am happy for her. She is doing just what she is supposed to be doing. She is embracing life and growing up. I just wish it wasn't so hard to let her go... such a myriad of emotions!

And just the same with my eldest. For the first time in her whole primary school life, I was able to see her school last Monday (14/12/09). She is leaving that chapter of her life and going on to high school next year. To sit at her graduation ceremony and see her whole primary school life in photos with "reflective" music playing throughout and her adoptive "mother" exclaiming "remember when she did that" and "remember when she was that age" was excrutiating to say the least. I had to do everything in my power not to cry, not to show the pain that was radiating through evey fibre of my body. To be there was surreal. A breakthrough in some regards and part of the reason this year has been so good. I met her best friends including their parents (one mother even commented how similar we are: "Like two peas in a pod" she exclaimed after observing us... hysterical). We met Amber's adoptive aunt and grandmother which went surprisingly well! They embraced us all, including our kids which they adored... and which had me panicking for a moment but they were just being nice. Very different to the experiences of previous times. But still, the ache is forever there and no matter how many times I see her, watching her leave without me always hurts... and so as I left, I watched her walk off into the darkness chatting with the woman who stole my daughter and my place at my daughter's side.

And then there is my youngest, Dude; my little man who has blessed my life with his mere existence. His birth, the least complicated, the least traumatic, the least encumbered with panic and heartbreak... the most natural. He has also grown into a little person, leaving his infant days behind him. He keeps me on my toes and chasing him around the house most of the day! He is talking and interacting with his bigger sister and they are lovely to watch together. We have our days like everyone but life really is good.

As for me, I feel like I am on a rollercoaster. Never before have I been so busy. Some days I have no idea which way is up! I wish I could say this means we are now millionaires but alas! no, I do not think that is currently possible. Life has become so expensive!

This year, I have met many fabulous people via the wonders of the internet. My blog has been up just over a year and I have met some fab people through here. I have been able to grasp a better understanding of what it is about adoption I am against as I know there are parts of it I struggle with because in some instances I agree with the principles behind the idea of adoption in certain cases. (What a sentence). I feel I am learning how to articulate in every day life away from my blog and the net why I am against adoption and to my surprise, I have been well received by several people who have no involvement in adoption but also those who ARE involved in adoption in one way or another. I have learned to be more open minded and I have also learned I am allowed to speak up and have my voice heard. All these things which at times make me feel like I am walking a tightrope as it is a major balancing act to not go one way or another.

So yes, 2009 has been a mixed bag of happiness, pain and anguish; a year of a hectic life schedule and exploring. For all my readers, even those who do not appreciate what I have to say, I wish you a very Happy Christmas and a blessing filled 2010.

For my fellow sisters, mothers who will this year again be away from their children, I wish you a peaceful Christmas. Sending you all much warmth and love to the broken hearts and sorrow filled places in your lives... I am sorry you must go through this and I am sorry I have to as well. Peace be with you all.

Thank you again for a great year and I look forward to seeing you again in 2010.

Myst xxx

The sickness that is adoption

2009-12-12T11:30:00.011+11:00

I am over adoption. Completely over it, I just wish it wasn't part of my life!

Lately I have seen more and more PAP's and adopters who love the sickly sweetness of the lie adoption is about. They love to think they are the saints and saviours rescuing a child who DOESN'T need rescuing and if they see anyone who doesn't agree with their point of view they will attack at full velocity. Maturity in these people appears to be at an all time low as does logic and basic intelligence.

I am sick of being nice, of trying to be understanding.

Adoption is hateful, poisonous, sick, evil and cruel. I have NEVER and I mean NEVER seen a positive come out of it. Not ONE single positive thing. All I have seen is toxicity, nastiness, anguish, pain, injustice, discrimination, abuse and the list goes on so wearingly long. And I am not even speaking of my own situation by the many, many cases I have read about via blogs, heard about directly from those involved or received via email.

I do quickly want to say I have met a couple of adoptive parents who I DO NOT place into the same category as most as they have made the choice to open their minds and eyes and try to see the perspective from another's point of view. And those two people I am grateful for.... one is a regular here on my blog and she has helped me see things on issues in a different light as well.

But besides these two fabulous women, I have met scores of women who devastate me by their mere existence, their level of selfishness and toxicity is so very devastating. They care so little about anyone else they box anyone who disagrees with adoption and place labels on their boxes such as bitter and angry. I think they forgot to take a good look in the mirror at themselves. Maybe they will find the two little lumps on their head are actually emerging horns... or snakes as in Medusa. These women really repulse me. Anyone who feels so entitled to the child of another woman is diseased in the mind. They have chosen to place all good virtues out of their lives and persued what they want at the expense of the child they adopt and the mother who is left out in the cold. They believe God chooses adoption for them... wow, they are so "Christian" they forgot to read their Bibles lately and instead fall for the crap "churches" sprout about adoption.

Adopting is about as far removed as being Christ-like I can imagine. I doubt He would advocate taking in another woman's baby because the mother lacked the resources to care for HER child. In fact, to be truly Christ like, would mean that the desire to parent would be given up in the desire to help someone i.e. work with others to help families stay together. Being Christ-like certainly doesn't mean ripping families apart through adoption and lying about keeping an adoption open which soooo many "Christians" do. I have met many people who have turned away from Faith, God and the church as a result of adoption so yeah, I can't imagine God is sitting up there commending the churches. I always thought churches were supposed to minister and bring people in? Gees, they are sure doing a great job of the opposite!

In my life, I have had many issues to work through including the consequences of poor choices I made. But nothing in my life has been as ugly as adoption. Nothing has ever opened my eyes to this world so sharply and made me so lack the desire to live in such an evil, twisted world. It is bad enough with all the other evils we already face but at least those other evils like child abuse, war, terrorism, child/human trafficking, rape, murder, robbery etc are recognised as such and don't hide behind a thin veil of "happy, happy, joy, joy".

Right now I am not in a gracious mood. I am grieving, I am suffering so if you chose to comment anything that appears to be judgemental or in any way a form of an attack, I will not respond kindly. I am warning you now so if I say something out of character you are forewarned. That doesn't mean you can't comment, just watch the wording as certain things can be perceived as personal attacks.

To choose adoption after knowing its devastating consequences, to me, is a choice to cause pain in others lives. In anything if we choose to cause pain we are guilty of a crime against humanity and are therefore advocating the abuses of human rights. Don't want to be seen as doing this? Don't adopt and find another way to be involved in a child's life that doesn't involve ripping a family apart.

Edited to add: I am removing the link to another blog due to the fact the other person has been quite hurt. Whilst I still disagree with their viewpoint, I do not want to hurt anyone. Adoption does enough damage without adding to it. Again, more proof as to how sad and destructive it really is.

2009-11-23T16:17:00.000+11:00

Slice, Cut, Stab... the warmth of blood, an indication my heart is still beating.

Why can’t I feel it?

Cold, so cold inside... yet I can feel the pain creeping up into every fibre of my being.

I wish I could turn these feelings off, shove them into the bottom of a drawer, turn the key and never revisit.

But... there is no way to flick the switch on this. It comes unexpectantly whenever it chooses. And I cannot stop the overwhelming desire to curl up in a ball and stay hidden away from the world.

Please sign and pass around...

2009-11-20T10:41:00.009+11:00

Currently, Austalia is in "Sorry" mode. They are saying 'sorry' to everyone - the Stolen Generartion and the Forgotten Australians were the first. Now they want to apologise to mothers and their children who were stolen from them. As if that would solve anything.

Origins Australia as well as many others do not want a second hand 'sorry'. We want justice and so before anyone aplogises to mothers and adoptees, we would like to see an Inquiry recognise what was done was a crime. Saying sorry is easy for a politician when they don't really mean it and haven't bothered to acknowledge the crimes that were committed.

Besides, how can they really say sorry if there hasn't been an inquiry to determine what to say sorry about? It just isn't logical.

So please follow the link and sign the petition. It is not a link to debate the issue. If you have an issue with it, please leave your comments here. If you choose to place your name on the petition while trying to speak against it, it will be counted as support anyway :) Everyone else, please sign and make your mark in the fight for justice for those who were victimised. Let's hope whatever happens here in Australia is a catalyst for major change in all other Western countries that push adoption as first choice for unplanned pregnancies.

(For some reason it won't show the link so please copy and paste address into your browser. Thanks!)

http://www.originsnsw.com/id35.html

Adoption and hypocrisy

2009-11-09T16:55:00.007+11:00

It strikes me adoption is on a ledge all of its own. It contradicts Nature and our whole way of life and yet we, as a society embrace adoption without question.

For a while now, I have felt adoption is completely hypocritical.

In situations where “usual” emotions are applied and expected, with adoption, these normal reactions are completely disregarded and not only that, they are ridiculed.

For example, a baby whose mother dies at birth or a person who loses their parents in infancy is allowed to be given support for this loss. When they are older and should they act out, excuses are made for their behaviours such as "well she never knew her parents you know, they died when she was just a baby" or "its to be expected when one loses their parents so young".

How many times have I heard stories on the news where a child has lost one or both parents and the reaction from the community is an outpouring of grief and support. However, when an infant loses his mother through adoption everything changes. He/she is expected to be grateful and this means accepting their adoption without hesitation. They are not respected as the baby who loses their mother through death is. No, instead of excuses, if this adoptee grows up and dares to speak out against adoption and their feelings of being adopted, they are labelled angry, ungrateful and bitter. Even babies whose mothers die are still given care by either a family relative or some other carer but their grief at losing their mother is not labelled anything else other than what it is: heartbreak at losing one's world. Do Adoptees receive the support, love and understanding the other child gets? No, and yet they should for their loss is exactly the same.

There is no difference to the little baby in the way a mother is lost. To a tiny person who has known no one but his or her mother for the length of pregnancy and however long they were able to spend with her outside the womb, losing their world is still traumatising. But why does society give those babies whose mothers or parents die more respect? Why are they allowed to mourn their loss and an adoptee is not? Adoptees are people...they are the same as every individual on the face of this earth and yet they are discriminated against in so many ways. It is hypocritical to say the very least.

Then there are mothers who say and claim they lost their babies to adoption, as I did. Yet, are told we did not lose our babies. We are told, even if our babies were taken from us through government agencies, lawyers, dodgy practises or wrongfully removed by child services, that it was our choice.

Does a mother choose for her child to be kidnapped? No, of course she doesn’t and she is given support and permission to grieve her loss. Mothers, like myself, who lost their child against their will, are shunned by society. We are told it was our choice or our fault. We are told to take responsibility for our choices and not to blame anyone else because it is convenient. Yet mothers who are victims of kidnappers and even mothers who lose their children in death are not treated thus. We have no services to assist us with our grief and it is not even recognised as a need. When our babies are taken, we are literally kicked to the curb to rot. No one wants to know about us or that we even exist after that moment.

Adoption taints everything it touches. It skews the way life is perceived. In every normal situation, a baby and mother are expected to stay together. As soon as adoption is whispered near a pregnant woman who may or may not be in an unplanned situation, all of a sudden, she becomes a villain if she decides to do what nature intended her to do... keep and raise her child herself. She is torn down, mocked, scorned, told she is ruining her child’s life, she is selfish, her child was not intended for her. All because she was doing what she is supposed to do. And she receives this treatment courtesy of adoption and its thugs.

Mothers who dare to speak up about their grief and speak out against adoption, are labelled bitter and angry. We are not accorded the same respect as a normal human being; our grief is scorned and we are branded with a scarlet letter all for the sake of giving birth and wanting to keep our own children. We are not even given our correct title of "mother" something even women who have suffered the loss of a child get to hold onto (and rightly so). How hypocritical can society get?

Somehow, mothers who lose their children to adoption are cold, unfeeling and heartless. I cannot count the number of times I have been told by other women they could not cope if they parted with their babies. That it would destroy them, they wouldn't be able to live. So, because I get out of bed each day and survive, somehow I am a cold, unfeeling bitch? Who says I cope? I still have days when the world feel like it will cave in on me but in this world to which I have been cast, I have no choice. It is either die or survive here and I choose to survive. That does not mean I love my daughter less and I am so over that insinuation.

Imagine if a mother whose child was killed or kidnapped was treated in this way? Or a child who lost their parents? The outcry would be enormous yet this behaviour, this cruelty is what many of us mothers and adoptees face EVERY SINGLE DAY.

The hypocrisy in adoption is shameful. It is an excuse to treat another human being as a sewer rat. It is the same lack of respect rapists and murderers accord their victims: N.O.N.E.

I will not be quiet about this crime against me and my child. Label me bitter and angry, that doesn’t mean you are right. It is easy to box someone who makes you feel uncomfortable and that is what society does with mothers and adoptees who do not do what they are apparently supposed to do and that is stay quiet about what their feelings are of what was done to them.

It is time to challenge every thread that holds adoption together and show how rotten it really is. Ignorant, hypocritical, cruel and criminal. We as humans have a responsibility to each other to rid systems and institutions that cause more harm than good. Again, hypocritically, adoption has been not only allowed to stay, but it has been encouraged and pushed because without it, many would not get what they desire.

Adoption embodies the spirit of hypocrisy and this needs to be eradicated.

Memories...

2009-10-13T15:24:00.007+11:00

My last blog post took me for an unexpected stroll through memory lane... memories I thought had long since gone; or lost behind a wall of pain.

However, they peeked out as I walked through the vaults and demanded to be heard and so as I lay in the darkness last night I allowed them to wash over me; to re-experience them again. They are not awful. They are not entirely unwelcome or all that significant. They are the gaps between time; the memories of other things that occurred whilst I was living my nightmare of trying to figure out what was going on.

They are little daily things I went through while pregnant with my first born.

Last night, they replayed through my head like an old video.

The first three months I hibernated mostly due to being so nauseous; no one knew where I was.

My craving that pregnancy was McChicken burgers; mostly the mayonnaise on the burger. I couldn't stand red meat, loved lettuce, milkshakes and mayo... on just about anything! I recall going through my wallet just before pay day to gather as many small silver coins so I could buy McChicken burgers.

I recall watching movies with my best friends and when my sister came to visit, with her. One movie stands out in particular: Mrs Winterbourne. I became addicted to Days of Our Lives as the part we were up to was about a kidnapped baby being sold for adoption... even then I could relate although my child was not yet born.

I remember warm days at the beach, nightclubbing with my friends (and no, I wasn't drinking), nannying for different families, crying over boys (well actually guys and only two in particular), going for midnight drives, going to the movies, and spending time day dreaming about my own small family.

This in the midst of a hell I was trying to escape.

I was very fit, walking everywhere and hardly looked pregnant until I reached 28 weeks and then my beautiful belly popped. Often I would walk through the gorgeous gardens Christchurch has to offer and just daydream.

Other times I recall sitting on my bed and just talking to my baby... rubbing my belly, singing to her, reading to her, telling her what I liked, what was going on.

My favourite movie at the time was Titanic. My favourite CD was Savage Garden, Aqua and the soundtrack to Titanic. I loved other music, especially Dance/club music and my fave radio staions were 91ZM and 92MoreFM. I adored the Pretender on TV; justice was always an important part of my life. I was a human rights activist, an AMnesty International volunteer and during Candle Day that year, I stood with my pregnant belly on a corner of a busy street selling pins and telling others about abuses of Human Rights. Little did I know I was to face my own situation in less than 3 months of that day.

I was a real person then. Lost, maybe, but still real. Squashed and unheard but I existed. I was not an incubator. I was not created to be raped and bear a child for another person. I had feelings, dreams and desires. And that was okay. That girl who I once was wants to breathe again, feel life through her veins after being so dead for so long. She is still broken but no longer will she be held back. Reuniting her with me, and merging her into my life is hard... so much time has passed and I feel like I am sleeping beauty waking up and my life has been lived for me and now I want it back.

Maybe this is why these memories are breaking through... it is my core choosing to do more than survive, more than get up in the morning and get through each day. I want to leave this life knowing there are happy memories; not those of just being a survivor, a victim.

Memories... powerful and fragile all at the same time.

What's in name? Everything...

2009-10-10T12:07:00.004+11:00

Part of being a blogger means you read the blogs by others... and the associated comments.

Recently I read a couple of blogs written by authors who are participating in a carnival known as "Grown in my Heart Carnival" (And yes, I gagged when I saw the title).

The theme of this carnival is Names and adoption... naming an adopted person.

Curious, I followed a link posted on one of these blogs and discovered a list of other blogs written by more participants and so I had a sticky beak at these as well.

I read until my blood was boiling and my heart felt it would break all over again with the painful reminders of what adoption does to a person.

A name is such an important part of a person. As a child, I can recall receiving parcels for my birthday from my grandparents and seeing MY name on the parcel used to thrill me. I cannot explain it, I just remember feeling important enough for a parcel to be in MY name and looking at my name, I felt a sense of who I am in this world. It was MY name and it came with a story of how it was chosen making it more special to me.

During my pregnancies with all my three children, I have always set out with names I would love to use. Over the course of the pregnancy as I have bonded and come to know my children INTRICATELY and in a way NO OTHER HUMAN HAS KNOWN MY CHILDREN, I came to see MY names might not be the ones for these little people developing inside of me and so I felt from them, their names. For ALL three of my children I have envisioned the type of people they are whilst they were growing in my womb. I have felt their core personalities, felt their amazing minds. To know these things so intimately about someone is more powerful than I could ever describe.

Their names reflected these feelings and all three of them have lived up to their names, including my daughter who I lost. But the name she lives up to is her real name, the name she was born with, not the name she has since been lumped with.

I do not use her adopted name unless I speak to her. I never have. Since I was pregnant I have known her only as the child I carried and the name I gave her took me some time to come to. That it was changed as if she were a new puppy or doll incenses me. It proves to me how much of a possession she is; not a human being with an identity already firmly in place.

She once indicated to me how much she didn't like her first name (her new name) and she was being teased at school for it. I couldn't say anything, I had to bite my lip!

I recall the day her adopters told me they were going to change her name and what it would be. I can recall her female adopter telling me what MY daughter would grow up to be like and how much her new name would reflect her life. I wanted to vomit. Instead I sat there looking at her in horror. Again, I saw how little my child meant to these people... she was merely a means, a shell to purge all their desires into. They didn't see my daughter as an already existing person with her own personality and feelings.

So yes names are more important than one can imagine. The name I gave to my daughter means: "Like a Jewel, cherished one and Symbol of Love, God's gracious gift". To have this taken from her was not necessary. Children are not puppies in need of a name. Children are not dolls, playthings. Adoption takes away a human element from a child that is really a form of abuse.

To answer some of the wonderings I read on a blog: I did rub my belly while I carried my daughter. I did speak to her, whisper to her through my tears in the dark. I did what any mother does who carries and raises her own child. I bonded with my child. Her adoption was unnecessary. The pain in her eyes is unnecessary and so is my broken heart and soul.

What a day!

2009-09-29T10:54:00.004+10:00

Alot has been going on in my life of late. I am a very busy woman! I have two jobs and have just started my own business and I still get calls about my old business!

However, despite the hectic, chaotic pace my life leads, I still have room to think about my daughter. I think I had been hoping the chaos in my life would numb me just a little, but it never works that way.

Since the last visit I had with Amber, I have struggled with what to do next. The 1-2 visits a year have not been enough and I have never had a chance to get to know her. Recently I emailed her adoptive parents and arranged a meeting to get together so we could discuss the contact as I did not feel it was working.

We met on a Sunday afternoon 2 weeks ago. My parents came with me for support as did my husband. Whilst sleep overs were immediately ruled out (no surprises there), we have been able to increase the visits up to 4 times a year PLUS a special event. It was going to be only 3 but thanks to the extra weight of my parents support behind me, we were able to convince them, well more the adoptive father, to have four. It helps Amber has been asking to see us as well!

So while we were all together, we arranged the next visist with plans to go to the beach. This took place just the other day, Sunday 27 September.

Thanks to the weather (which I was really happy about, I am not fond of sand in my eyes) we couldn't go to the beach and opted to go to the National Park at the end of my parent's road.

After much begging on Noodle's and Amber's part, she was allowed to travel in our car - a short 10 minute drive - to the park!! I cannot put into mere words how ecstatic I felt looking into our back seat and seeing my ENTIRE family as it should be! It really was surreal but also felt so natural... perfect!

We arrived and went for a walk through the bush for about 45 minutes... I returned earlier as I have been sick but they continued on. As they returned the wind picked up, stronger, and being so cold we decided to take the pcinic back to my parent's place for lunch.

It is amazing how food works to bring people together. A basic human need that works to bring people together even if only for a short time. Anyway, we were all hungry and we enjoyed a great lunch consisting of offerings made by everyone.

Following lunch, we moved inside courtesy of the cold wind and Noodle relunctantly went to a birthday party. Dude and I stayed with Amber and the next hour and a half tuned out to be the most amazing time we have ever spent together. Dude just potted around as he does and Amber and I retreated to our own little bubble where we spent time just getting to know each other.

On this windy afternoon, I was given the chance to find out what her favourite past times are, the books she loves, her favourite movies, music and songs. It is impossible to put into words the feelings I had after learning all this about her. How can one describe getting to know a little about their child despite seeing her over the past 8 years and never knowing anything? When I got home, I went straight onto iTunes to locate a song I had tried once before to find and couldn't... one that she told me she DID find and is now one of her favourites. It has been played non-stop...

The thread that had thinned so much over the past 11 years just started glowing again and gained some thickness that day. The bond we developed as she grew inside me, as we formed our own little method of communicating, the bond that we had when she would feed and hold onto my hair while studying my face out of the corner of her eye, THAT bond is reigniting... and just writing about this is giving me chills with the absolute delight of it all.

When it was finally time to go, I walked with her to their car and she stood there, satring into my eyes, reluctant to say good bye. She is now slightly taller than me so we were fairly level. She hugged me, let me go and hugged me again. She repeated this a couple of times. Fortunately, we have a date for when we see her again and that will be her graduation. I can't wait!

The funny thing is, in reality, the visit was not much different to previous times yet something inside ME chnaged and I was determined to get to know her regardless of the fact I was being watched closely the whole time.

I have come down a bit from my huge high on Sunday but it has been a gradual coming down, not a crash as I normally have. I know when I am to see her next and I have something I can share with her in the time I am waiting to see her: a song. The song is from the end of 'Stardust', a fantasy movie, something we both have in common. Funny thing is, the main guy character in the story is separated from his mother at birth by a witch and raised by his father. At the end, the mother and son are reunited and the mother and father are reunited and everyone lives happily ever after. I often wonder what is going through her head when she watches this movie... and if she realises the parallels in our lives. Anyway, that is where the song comes from.

So that is my news... and I can only hope and pray this is the beginning of something amazing. I only wish for my friends who have not been so blessed, they too can one day get a chance to know their children as well.

Love to all of you, I am so lucky to have you.

Myst xxx

New Zealand Adoption Act 1955

2009-09-25T10:11:00.007+10:00

I thought it was about time I posted about this archaic and barbaric piece of legislation which almost annihilated my life and separated my daughter from her true family.

Over the past few years, I have come across many statements about adoption in New Zealand that have left me absolutely shocked and quite concerned with the lack of knowledge the general public have about the true nature of the laws in NZ and how ancient they are.

A couple of friends have kept me up to date with what is going on over in NZ and one friend told me about a talk back on radio a few years back which has had me very concerned about the reality of adoption and how the public view it.

I have come across statements about how open adoption is in New Zealand and how advanced they are in the adoption world.

I would like to set the record straight.

For a country that prides itself in doing the “right” thing and keeping up with or surpassing other major countries in the west in important issues, Adoption is one area New Zealand is literally stuck in the dark ages.

You see, the law still operates under the New Zealand Adoption Act of 1955. Yes, that’s right, 1955!! The same Act that saw babies stolen at birth, mothers drugged and forced to sign while still under the influence of these drugs. In reality, nothing in the legal system has changed.... and when you look at what happened in my case, the practise of the Act hasn’t changed.

Open Adoption is nonexistent despite the adopters I have heard of claiming all adoptions are open today. As yet, while there is talk of making open adoption a legal agreement, there is NO SUCH THING AS OPEN ADOPTION IN THE LAW. It simply does not exist so just like in the good old US of A, adopters can promise the earth to a child’s mother and slam the door shut in her face the minute the ink is dry on the final order. Again, something that happens all too often.

Sadly, adoptive parents, whilst knowing the truth of this, have been making claims about all adoptions in New Zealand being open and that closed adoptions no longer exist. This is just not true. The Act ONLY provides for a CLOSED adoption: Open Adoptions are merely word of mouth agreements completely at the whim of the adoptive parents. Whilst some might honour their agreements, there are more that DON’T and thus the adoption is closed as the LAW provides for this.

The Act as it currently stands provides room for private adoptions, a dangerous practise given there is no compulsory counselling for an expectant mother. In fact, while we are on that subject, there is NO protection for an expectant mother other than she cannot sign before her baby is ten days old. Long enough for those lusting after her baby to wear her down to a point she cannot think for herself, especially so soon after childbirth.

The whole issue surrounding consent is another huge cause for alarm. As I have already mentioned, there is no room in the Act for counselling to be given to the natural parents. In fact there is no protection in the Act to ensure a mother is fully aware of the implications and law of adoption for her and her child, no protection from being coerced and bullied into signing a consent when it is clearly against her will.

In my case, I was wrongly informed if I didn't sign the consent, the Attorney General could sign on my behalf. Whilst this does happen in some cases, it is rare and only in the case of a child being abused. However, when you are not given unbiased information and are isolated and unsupported, this sort of information does much damage. The Act in providing NO counselling for expectant and new mothers, allows for coercion and fraudulent practises to obtain an adoption consent. To ensure an adoption consent is obtained without Fraud or coercion, one would expect madatory counselling to be introduced immediately and by persons who understand the complexity of what it really means to sign such a consent.

A lawyer taking a mother's consent can leave out all important facts such as once signed there is no revocation period and then state in an affidavit, that he laid out the law and his word is upheld over hers. The lawyer who took my consent had a huge conflict of interest given he was an adoptive parent advocating for more adoptions. Working in conjunction with my so called "crisis counsellor", I was easy prey for their games.

The Act itself is written with such ambiguous language, it is difficult to decipher at exactly what point a consent becomes irrevocable. While trying to reclaim my daughter barely days after being FORCED to sign, I was told I could reclaim my daughter for up to 6 months. I was also told this BEFORE I signed. However, the reality is that once signed, that piece of paper, regardless of how the signature is obtained, is irrevocable. Criminal. In my own interpretation of the Act, I would say there is room for revocation before an interim order has been made AFTER the application has been processed... however the ambiguity of this section in the Act makes it difficult to know exactly. Again, to protect from undue pressure being allowed to bully her into signing a consent, the consent should not be made irrevocable; indeed, a mother should be able to reclaim her child, HER FAMILY at any time before a final adoption order is made or six months as that is usually how long it would take for a mother suffering from depression, under the influence of others or with Post Natal Depression may need to allow all her hormones and post birth physical and meotional condition to settle down. Undertaking to separate a mother and her child is such a huge task it shouldn't be dealt with lightly however, the Adoption Act of 1955 places ALL the power and choices into the hands of the adopting family and depsite its so called bid to see the best interests and welfare of the child are taken into account, these are usually neglected in favour of approving the adoption, as mentioned below.

There is no protection for the child being placed for adoption and while an Adoption order can only be finalised once it is deemed to be in the best interests and welfare of the child, this is just a formality and not really taken in consideration as if it were, most of the adoptions would NOT take place as a guillotine approach to a child’s life can never be in his/her best interests OR welfare.

This ancient and archaic piece of legislation breaches the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights; in particular Article 25 part (ii) which states:

“(2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.”

While New Zealand has the Domestic Purposes Benefit, it is not encouraged and in my experience and that of other mothers I have spoken to in New Zealand, being a single mother is NOT given special care and assistance.

The Adoption Act also breaches Article 7:

“All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.”

The Act denies a mother to any legal standing before the court should she try to fight an order being made. Home owners have more rights in New Zealand than a mother trying to reclaim her own child. Considering we are dealing with people's lives here and not a piece of land or property, this is incredibly disturbing.

This Act also breaches the Convention of the Rights of the Child, in particular Articles 7, 8 and 9 which state:

“Article 7
1. The child shall be registered immediately after birth and shall have the right from birth to a name, the right to acquire a nationality and, as far as possible, the right to know and be cared for by his or her parents. (While children are give a name with adoption, it is usually not the name they were given at birth)

2. States Parties shall ensure the implementation of these rights in accordance with their national law and their obligations under the relevant international instruments in this field, in particular where the child would otherwise be stateless.

Article 8
1. States Parties undertake to respect the right of the child to preserve his or her identity, including nationality, name and family relations as recognized by law without unlawful interference. (Adoption by its guillotine effect completely denies this depsite a child being given a new name and family. A child has the right to the family they are born to.)

2. Where a child is illegally deprived of some or all of the elements of his or her identity, States Parties shall provide appropriate assistance and protection, with a view to re-establishing speedily his or her identity.

Article 9
1. States Parties shall ensure that a child shall not be separated from his or her parents against their will, except when competent authorities subject to judicial review determine, in accordance with applicable law and procedures, that such separation is necessary for the best interests of the child. Such determination may be necessary in a particular case such as one involving abuse or neglect of the child by the parents, or one where the parents are living separately and a decision must be made as to the child's place of residence. (In other words, children should not be separated from their families where there is NO evidence of abuse or neglect! Not to mention the fact when an adoption takes place, the CHILD has no say in the matter so "against their will" can never be really determined. The decision is all based on the court and usually in favourof the adopters.)

2. In any proceedings pursuant to paragraph 1 of the present article, all interested parties shall be given an opportunity to participate in the proceedings and make their views known.

3. States Parties shall respect the right of the child who is separated from one or both parents to maintain personal relations and direct contact with both parents on a regular basis, except if it is contrary to the child's best interests.

4. Where such separation results from any action initiated by a State Party, such as the detention, imprisonment, exile, deportation or death (including death arising from any cause while the person is in the custody of the State) of one or both parents or of the child, that State Party shall, upon request, provide the parents, the child or, if appropriate, another member of the family with the essential information concerning the whereabouts of the absent member(s) of the family unless the provision of the information would be detrimental to the well-being of the child. States Parties shall further ensure that the submission of such a request shall of itself entail no adverse consequences for the person(s) concerned.”

The Act as it stands, cuts a child off from their natural heritage completely, changes their name, falsifies their birth certificate and basically makes their life into a lie. The Act does not allow for children to voice their own views and they are not given a platform on which to be heard.

The sections I have highlighted were in my case completely breached. The Act allows for this by not giving any protection to prevent this from happening.

Further to the Articles above, the Act breaches Articles 10, 12, 13, 14 and 16. Adoption has well known detrimental mental health effects on the child and yet the Act completely disregards these in favour of family separation. This principle undermines the Family Court’s role to keep families together where possible. Adoption in this legislation is about providing a family with a child and is not focussed on the important role of finding a home for a child who NEEDS one. Children who have families already do not need homes. Their families need the right tools and assistance to help raise this child.

Adoption with its “clean start” mentality, breaches a child’s right to live the life they were born too. Even in cases of abuse where a child is forcibly removed (and quite rightly so), adoption should not be the answer.

If New Zealand wants to uphold its duty to its people and more importantly its children, they will abolish the Adoption Act of 1955 and replace it with legislation that upholds the fundamentals of a child’s basic rights to their family. Australia leads the way when it comes to adoption. It is by no means perfect but at least it has a giant leap of a start over the other western countries who refuse to acknowledge the damage adoption causes.

It is time a National Inquiry was called into the Adoption Act 1955 and its practises over the last 54 years. Until those in government stand up and take responsibility for this barbaric piece of legislation, New Zealand cannot move forward and be seen as a country looking after her people. I love my country but thanks to the laws of my own home land, I lost my child. And I want something to be done about it so no other mother or child EVER has to needlessly suffer what I and my daughter have been through again.

Ignorance

2009-08-17T13:30:00.003+10:00

Ignorance
• noun lack of knowledge or information (as defined by Oxford English dictionary)

It is a funny thing, ignorance. We have the sayings “Ignorance is a state of mind” or “Ignorance is bliss”. Recently, I have come to the conclusion ignorance is a choice. A choice made so people can continue to live in their protected little bubbles. A choice made so they don’t have to take responsibility for their actions. It is a cop out. There is a point in time when this occurs. I do believe there are people out there who are innocently ignorant and they choose to Seek, they are Seekers for the truth and so they make the choice, in the end, to NOT be ignorant.

With my last post, I had an interesting visitor who didn’t like what I had to say and at the conclusion of her tirade decided it was just easier to label me as ignorant. Why? Because I don’t bow to her way of thinking, that I would dare speak out about what is so very wrong about an adult institution forced on innocent children to endure. She did not want to learn and so she did what most closed minded individuals do and that is project her issues onto me... in other words she labelled ME ignorant without realising she was in fact talking about herself.

I admit, I have been guilty of ignorance in the past. Everyone is at some point in their life.

When I was younger and lived in the media driven world and believed the same as all who do who listen to majority rule, I was totally ignorant to what adoption and many other social injustices were about. I had a dream I would one day go and adopt all the children who were orphans in Russia as they were continually in the news and the message I got was how marvellous adoption was and how much these poor little children needed me.... until I discovered that I was not getting the full story and many “orphans” discovered they were never orphans at all and not placed willingly and some were in fact kidnapped.

Ignorance, passed onto young children, can be harmful. When I was 9 years old, my family and I lived in Manila, Philippines where my parents were working with a mission doing aid work. I went to an American school and adoption was prevalent here as one can imagine. In fact since then, I never heard much about adoption until my own experiences. I would travel to school on the yellow school bus, much like the ones on the movies. As I was one of the first to be picked up, I had a very long time, in fact almost 2 hours, to talk to all the other children who were picked up en route.

One little girl in particular took a liking to me and would seek me out. She was only 6 or 7 and we would talk for ages. She was a Filipina and adopted. One day she told me she was adopted and asked me why. I had no idea at this point what adoption was, had never even heard of the word and so I decided I would ask one of the many grownups in my life. I cannot recall exactly who I asked but it wasn’t my parents and I was informed adoption was when a mother didn’t want her child and so placed them for adoption for other people to raise. I was horrified. At this point, I was a mad lover of all things baby related and to think a mother would not want her child chilled my heart and I was devastated.

The next day I got on the bus and tried to avoid the little girl but she sought me out and asked me outright if I had asked and what I had discovered. I hesitantly told her what I had been told and she was so upset. I told her how sorry I was and that I am sure her new family loved her a lot but it wasn’t enough and I know now how cruel it must have sounded to her.

The following day when she got on the bus, I asked her how she was and she told me her mummy had told her not to speak to me. I was really upset as I had given her the answer I had been told. I never forgot her. I can still see the look of pain on that little girl’s face and I hate what I did. Myself, I didn’t know any better as I was passing on information from an adult who chose to remain ignorant. And this is my point.

Adults choose to be ignorant when they don’t open their minds. It becomes a disease, a poison when it is passed onto children who then use ignorance to hurt others as happened in my story above.

As I grew older, I listened to majority view as most young teens do and believed adoption was a ‘wonderful’ thing; an honourable service to those in need and no one lost, a win-win situation for all. I believed all the stereotyped views.

At 16, I became best friends with an adopted girl. All she did was talk about her mother and how one day she wanted to find her and what she would be like. She loved her adoptive family but from what she said it was plain to see although she was meant to be part of them, she didn’t view herself one of them. The questions in my head started to form.

Leading up to the time I became pregnant, many of the world views I held on life were brought into question and the strict church upbringing I had no longer made sense. I started to question everything, would hold debates with strangers over their view on things and my eyes started to open.

Then I discovered I was pregnant and was thrown into a new world. Even though my child was conceived in a sexual assault, I determined in my head early on she was not to blame for her father’s deeds. While still reeling from the news I was to be a mother, I can vividly recall standing in front of the mirror in my bedroom, lifting my top so I could stare at my very flat belly and speak to my little one growing inside me. I remember telling him/her how much I loved them already and couldn’t wait to meet them. Little did I know at this time others would feel entitled to an opinion on what should become of my small family, of what my future and my child’s future should hold. Little did I know how entitled others would feel to my baby, my flesh and blood.

Through this time, I discovered the lie of adoption; of what truly lurks behind all the glossy movies, stories and the stereotypes. I became hot property, everyone had a view. I was evil for wanting to keep my child, selfish, would destroy her life; she would hate me for not placing her in a stranger’s home. In my state of shock, I listened and my resolve was worn down. The brainwashing took hold and I believed I was terrible. My heart told me not to listen but I was told that my heart was wrong so my head took over and listened to the threats of having my child taken from me if I didn’t sign her over. Of course now I know this was all lies and there was never any way had I been supported in my decision to raise my daughter there would have been any reason to have her removed.

After I lost her, I threw myself into researching adoption. For the first part of the next 11 years I was adamant there were no situations that warranted a child being removed from their parent’s care and I stubbornly resisted any other suggestion. Since then, I have researched, spoken to many, many others about their thoughts and feelings, debated the topic and read a great number of blogs and books. I do not believe I am ignorant any longer as it is a choice I make to learn as much as I can about adoption and other social injustices. I have learned to accept many points of view but I have also learned I have a right to have an opinion.

Many have tried to squash my opinion, to change my story, to tell me what happened despite not knowing anything about me, knowing what happened or being there. Many have tried to write me off and label me as if that would wipe the truth away. As I have written in another post, these are people who refuse to see the truth when it is staring at them as it upsets WHY they want to believe the view they cling to.

Ignorance is not being firm in one’s belief. While I have held firm on why I believe adoption should be abolished, I have learned what about adoption I detest and what about it makes it so wrong. I have many non-adoption-related friends who have learned through me the evils of adoption and they concur. And are amazed at how blind society has become in promoting this social crime. I have to admit, it is a bitter pill to swallow. The way adoption is currently packaged in society’s eyes with the likes of ‘Juno’ and stories of orphaned children being rescued, it sounds like a benevolent service but when one delves deeper and dares to look past what society accepts, one is able to see the truth: how selfish and self serving adoption is; an abuse of basic human rights.

To choose ignorance in a matter such as this equates to squashing those less fortunate than yourself. To choose to close your mind and not be open to what really goes on in the dark world that is adoption is to say to others you think they are better than them and don’t care about their suffering because it affects you not. It says a lot about you as a person; how little compassion you have; little ability to extend a hand to those in need. Ignorance is saying to your fellow human being you don’t care what they go through because you don’t want to hear about it. Its the whole “hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil” taken to an entirely new level.

Ignorance is poison and there is no excuse for it.

Vent

2009-08-08T01:32:00.005+10:00

I have removed this letter due to poitive recent events and do not want these hindered by a possible misreading of the content in this letter.

Myst xxx

Choking

2009-07-22T16:44:00.000+10:00

Choking. Suffocating. There is no other way to describe these overwhelming emotions threatening to take over my grip on reality. The word ‘pain’ feels overused... it is almost too basic now. There are no words to describe how I really feel.

Every day, I wake up, get up, go about my daily life but at the back of my mind, this monster lurks. Threatening me menacingly... trying to take control of the reigns, but still, I fight back, try to keep my control.

I close my eyes at night and fill my head with daily nonsense; the latest books I have read, my work stresses etc... but she is always there as I let go into slumber. I can see her eyes burning me as she asks why, why, why? I cannot answer her... I cannot connect, my protective shield has gone up and all I have energy to do is hide myself from her, so she cannot see the broken shards left over from my heart.

This, all this from one hug. One hug and one look that has held me captive ever since... accentuating the helplessness in my situation; the fact I cannot be there for my own flesh and blood when she needs me. How can I describe this even remotely close to what I truly feel when I think of my eldest daughter?

In February, I blogged about my last visit with Amber. Since then I have been unable to write to her, unable to email her captors for another visit, unable to let myself think of her as I usually do. It has been unbelievably difficult to try and keep her out... but when I have allowed the thoughts to come, I feel like I could be crushed by their weight; it really has been so traumatising.

Her actions in clinging to me, in not wanting to let go, the look in her eyes... it was all so raw; her pain so clear for all to see and yet I had to stop myself from screaming as she was yet again taken away, taken to a place she calls home with strangers she calls ‘mum’ and ‘dad’ who have forced her to live this pain and are purposely oblivious to her pain so they can fulfil their own desires. As a mother, this incenses me to a point I want to hurt someone. Not that I would... but oh to be a mother lioness who has the right to defend her own young in her own environment. There is no justice in our world.

So, here I sit in a new plain of trauma. It comes with the territory of being in an “Open Adoption”. Someone from hell must have been giving out free lessons on how to cause a new brand of evil and torture that day because it really is above any other torture I have suffered yet. Sexual abuse, assault, terrorism... yes they were all bad but nothing on the losing of one’s own child over and over and over and over.... again.

I’m sorry Amber, so sorry, Mama’s hurting really badly right now that I can’t keep my head above the current... please know how much I love you and wish I could bring you home right now. Peace beautiful girl....

Taking Back My Power

2009-07-16T13:37:00.004+10:00

When I began this blog, I viewed it as a way to give myself a voice; a voice which has been up until recently, stifled, ignored, shut down at all cost. I have always loved journaling and writing; using words to convey how I feel. For a long time, after losing Amber and after a previous trauma in my younger life, this part of me shut down. I had a block, words just wouldn’t string themselves together the way they used to. When I did start to write again, I cared to much about what people thought about my words, how I conveyed the deepest parts of me. In sharing myself this way, I felt I was giving others the power to hurt me. Until now.

Now, I realise, the only power they have is what I allow them to think they have. And that is zilch.

I realise it has been some time since I posted anything here. I have had a rough month, in fact, I have been down to my lowest points again, to the point where I experienced the longing to cut again, to see the beads of blood along my arm to prove I was still alive, still breathing. I managed to resist this urge and came out of my ravine. What plunged me there? How did it come to be that I sunk so low, so very, very low that it was scary low?

About six weeks ago, I took a deep breath and decided to share my blog with my non-adoption world; that is to paste links to my story on my normal Facebook page. My reasons for doing this were to share with friends whom I haven’t been in touch with for a long time and wanted to know what my life has been like in the last 10 odd years, an explanation without needing to find the mental energy to do it several times. I also wanted to be brave; to show my other side to those I see almost daily.

In doing this, I totally forgot, that out of several thousand words, a couple of lines briefly mentioned one person, NOT by name, who had been very pushy with the adoption, although in her eyes, she sees her actions as supporting a decision I apparently had already made. This person was also connected to me via Facebook. Given her views on my situation and the case, I didn't think she would ever bother reading the link... not that I even had her in mind when I posted on Facebook! But read it, she did.

Without compassion or asking how she had been so hurtful, she sent me an email defending herself, telling me to change my story. Not only that, she went through my mother first which really angered me.

I did not respond to the email she sent me, I was in shock and the further I tried to sit on it and do nothing, the angrier I became. Then I asked myself why was I so angry? How did this have such a devastating effect on me to the point it hindered EVERYTHING I did? I mean, yes, she did have a minor point in her email but why were her words so harmful? Then I realised. It clicked. What she was doing now, pushing HER feelings on me, telling me how to feel, what my experience had been and omitting her very real part in my ACTUAL story was doing the same thing she did to me all those years ago when I was vulnerable and pregnant and alone.

SHE WAS TAKING AWAY MY VOICE, MY POWER and that is what angered me more than anything else. Infuriated me and yes, I am still angry for she represents all who do this and refuse to see their part and take responsibility for their actions in other’s lives. While I don’t question her intentions were not malicious because I don’t think they were; (many did not have nasty intentions, they were mistakenly doing what they felt was right) I am enraged after reading the full account of what happened to me, she could not take herself out of the situation for one moment and see someone else’s pain, see the experience of another human being who has suffered. Instead, all she cared about was herself. Her name was never mentioned, no one would have known it was her yet still all she could think about was two lines out of hundreds... all it does is confirm how correct I was in my original estimation of what really went down.

People have to come to terms with the fact there are consequences to their actions, their words. They have to see that sometimes, “The greatest Harm can result from the best Intentions”. This well meaning person forgets that she played more than one part in my story and I do not have the energy to argue with her about the part she played in MY experience. Because at the end of the day, it is MY story, MY journey. MY daughter that is lost and not hers. This is why I am taking back my power. I am sharing this with everyone because it happens to all of us at some point when those who do not want to accept responsibility try to shut us down or make us change the facts. We can’t change what happened to please others, to make THEM feel better. We shouldn’t have to either.

So, in closing this post, I want to offer a word of advice for ALL who read my posts. This is MY VOICE and I will post what is pertinent to MY journey. If you don’t like it, tough, I don’t make you read here, that was your choice. If you have appeared in my account and can recognise yourself and don’t like that representation, again, TOUGH. Karma is a bitch they say...

I don’t do this to be unkind but I have had enough of being told what to do by those who think that just because they are older than me they feel they have the right to dictate to me. I lived that my whole life in the church. “Respect thy elders”... what a lot of good that did for me...NOT.

So I am taking back my power and I don’t care who likes it or not.

The Case Against Adoption: Part 3: Alternatives to Adoption

2009-06-21T01:56:00.010+10:00

As promised in my last post in this series, I am following it up with what I feel are sufficient alternatives to adoption.

Before I begin, I want to say I do get there are needs in our world to provide homes for children that are stable because a child has suffered abuse of all sorts, been orphaned, in some cases abandoned or for whatever other reason not mentioned, removed from their parents care. It saddens me to see and hear about these cases. Not because of the separation necessarily but because of what led to this separation. I feel in these cases, children have lost twice over. First, they have lost the normal relationship between a child and their parent. They have been hurt, abused or neglected. This has then become so bad they have then lost their family... but their whole family, not just their parents. Sometimes they are separated from siblings so they lose this relationship, the loss of grandparents they might have known. It is a huge tragedy and I grieve for these innocent little souls who have had to grow up so quickly; in such a cruel and hurtful way.

I acknowledge there are fabulous people in our world with an amazing capacity to love and nurture children who are not theirs biologically. I have had the privilege to meet a handful of these people and it is heart warming to know there are people like this in our world of pain, evil and greed. These are not the sort of people who need titles, recognition of being the only parents who matter etc. These are the people who know what love really and honestly means and will give without expecting in return.

These are the kind of people this world needs more of. These are the kind of people children like those I mentioned above need.

So what does this have to do with adoption? Over the past 11 years since I have been unwillingly submerged in the world of adoption where I have lived, breathed, tasted it every single day, I have learnt one major thing: Adoption is not, has never been and can never be, about love. Love for a child does not need a title. We can nurture without one. Love doesn’t need to eradicate a child’s past or dismiss a child’s heritage to care for a child. We can only truly love a child if we learn to accept and love a child’s family... with all their faults.

If adoption was non-existent, what could we place in its stead? How could we see children are given what they need? How could we see a child be kept in a stable environment? I don’t have complete answers but what I do have are ideas and alternatives that I believe could work, if we all bothered to step outside our cosy little boxes and saw past our adult needs and into the eyes of the child who needs us to be responsible, mature and there for THEM in THEIR time of need.

Guardianship
This already exists in today’s law. It is when a parent relinquishes custody but not parental rights and they still get varying amounts of contact and say in their child’s life. I am only going off what I know about guardianship in my country so if you want to know for sure the ins and outs in your own, contact a lawyer for more details.

This option I think needs to be changed a little. If I was to be a child’s guardian, I would want to make sure I did have custody and from what I understand currently, custody is always able to be challenged. I like this option because there is no guillotine to a child’s previous life and the parent gets a say in their child’s life. I would promote this option in cases where it would be possible for a child to return to their parents.

Foster Care
Currently this is an overworked system with not enough carers. There seems to be much competition between some carers and parents which I feel needs to be worked on. If a child is in care for any reason, where possible, parents and carers need to work together to do what is best for the child. This means taking special steps to recognise each situation is unique and not applying a generalised ‘solution’ i.e. one size fits all kind of mentality.,

Permanent Care
Out of all actual current legal alternatives to adoption, this one appears to be the best. Apparently it is also only available in Australia at this time but is a step in the right direction. It is for children who have been permanently removed from their parent’s care and there is no option for them to return due to mental health issues, abuse, neglect and other issues. From what I understand and I am not totally clear on this but the child is not adopted therefore does not have a new birth certificate issued and the order expires once the child reaches 18. This is a brilliant step in the right direction as it recognises children need permanency without the need to wipe out their past, name, identity and family of birth.

My Alternative
Personally, I would like to see the removal of all adoption agencies. Take the money making out of the equation. Profit should NEVER be made from a person’s pain and suffering and usually right from the start there are two people suffering: mother and baby. To make money off what is happening to them is cruel.

Women facing crisis pregnancies should be counselled about their options; and parenting should be their FIRST option, not the last as it is currently presented. If they are struggling, they need to be given support, ways to combat their struggles and not manipulators who want to benefit from their struggles. We sponsor children we don't know in other countries to be given basic needs (and in some cases they get those needs met in others the only way of knowing is by going to see for yourelf) so why can't we sponsor a mother and her child in our own country to stay together? A way for her to have a future?

If, right at the very end, once they had baby and are convinced they cannot parent then wider family is the first option before permanent care options are sought. Whilst permanent care orders are currently not voluntary from a parent’s perspective, in the small number of cases where a child is sadly unwanted, then there needs to be an option for a child to go to a family who wants to love a child without removing from them their past.

I think we need to start with the prevention of crisis pregnancies... more information in schools of how to protect themselves and what to do once it happens. There is still a huge stigma attached to teen pregnancies... I have seen it firsthand. There is an assumption that once you have a child, your life has ended. This needs to be changed and facts put in place to dispel the myths, even the cold hard facts. I am not talking about glamming-up single parenthood... but I don't feel demonising it helps either.

In stuations where a child goes into care, a child would be issued with only one birth certificate; the one with all their natural parents details. Names given at birth would be kept and only changed should the CHILD desire it. Where possible, visits would be set up according to each situation; and the parents would have a varying degree of input in the child’s life where it BENEFITS the CHILD. All paperwork issued would recognise the previous life and natural family of a child whist also giving recognition to the guardians and carers of the child.

At the end of the day though, I would like to see more people parenting; more families rallying together to support their family member in need. Any care options should be reserved for children who are in true dire need. We need to inform people; arm them with knowledge to help them live their lives in the best possible way without causing hurt in another's life. The world as a whole needs to embrace their fellow human being and instead of being in the wings waiting for them to trip up, step up and be actively supportive. We need to identify those who are in trouble early on, to help, wherever possible, prevent the issues that lead to foster and permanent care. I have noticed a trend of people saying they don't want to become involved so they sit back and do nothing. People appear to be content to watch their fellow human beings suffer instead. This needs to change. Heroes today are defined when people do normal human things like stepping in to assist rather than standing back. If normal reactions are so extraordinary today, it shows how far we have sunk as a human race.

Of course not all alternatives are fool proof and not all situations would work perfectly... but any system that is wide open, that is completely honest and built on a foundation completely dedicated to doing what is really best for the child has to be better than what we currently have in adoption. You just cannot have a bright prospect for an institution that is solely purpose built for an adults need when you are dealing with children and family separation. It can’t work. History shows us it hasn’t. And won’t.

So whilst some may think these alternatives are idealistic, simplistic etc, I have yet to see anyone else trying to put together an alternative. I have yet to see anyone put forward a new picture, a new idea to stop the pain and suffering that occurs every day an adoption takes place. Maybe my solutions are not the best... but at least I am willing to stick my neck out and try. I am not happy to sit with the status quo. It is said that all that is needed for evil to prosper in this world is for good people to stay silent. I will not be silent. And if all of us out there advocating for a better world, a happier place for our children and the children of tomorrow, then we would all be trying harder to come up with ideas. You can call me idealistic and unrealistic. But what can you offer? Anything?

From an early age, children have fascinated me. That is why I went into early childhood education. They are our future. And this is how we have thus far treated them... by ripping them from their families. Any wonder our world is so screwed up?

Useful links:

Permanent Care

More permanent care info

Foster Care in Australia