Dear Ms. Feverfew –
Well, actually I don’t know if I am your mother’s worst nightmare or not but I certainly know I am a nightmare scenario for some adoptive mothers out there. Maybe a more appropriate title for this would be “I am Some Mother’s Worst Nightmare.”
Why, you might be wondering?
Because I am a mother who has found her voice. Because I am writing with the “freedom of those who are marginalized to the establishment” and “with the zeal of those who are creating and affirming themselves by writing” (Rainer, 1997, p. 28). Because I write with complete abandon. Because I have already lost you, I have nothing to lose by risking it all.
Not only have I found my voice, but I have found my backbone. The truth is it is was there all along but the lies of my parents and my culture were a scoliosis of the soul. I am no longer the scared 20-year old mother who kowtowed to her culture and priesthood leaders. I am a fully mature woman, intelligent, articulate, and well-read. I am a woman who has plumbed the depths of her spirituality and discovered a spine straightened and steeled by the Father’s love for her.
Not only have I found my voice and my backbone, I am not going away. I am no longer willing to sit in the back of the bus. I am no longer going to hold the coattails of the adoption industry. I will tell my story until it is all told. My hope is that in telling my story – in speaking my truth – it may be a pathway for other mothers and adoptees to tell their parts of the story we call Life. Each of us has a unique and valuable contribution to be made to the Truth–the world needs our wisdom, our life experiences, our truth. “Although each of us gets a different life story–a different piece of the puzzle–our tribe needs the wisdom of us all for the truth to emerge” (Rainer, 1997, p. 36; emphasis added). The long arc of justice demands the scales be balanced–telling my story is part of the balancing.
There is a certain raw, unbounded beauty in the liberating experience of “becoming fierce with the truth” (Rainer, 1997, p. 97). I hope you can discover this beauty yourself someday.
Much love,
M.
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Oops. Forget the reference. Here it is.
Rainer, T. (1997). Your life as story. Penguin Putnam, Inc: New York.
Letters to Ms. Feverfew 
There is a certain raw, unbounded beauty in the liberating experience of “becoming fierce with the truth”…
And the truth is what we have. That is why we are their worst nightmare~
Amen to that, Stephanie.
M.
Thank you for telling your story the way you are doing it. It is one so worth listening to,
B.
Thank you for your kind words.
I absolutely love this and resonate with it to the point where I’m actually considering blogging again.
T – You should start blogging again. The more voices that are out there, the harder it is for people to ignore.
M.
Amen,( lol and I am not even religious!)
to everything you have said the
Truth hurts adoption but the seedy side
needs to be told by all mothers who have
lost their baby to the adoption machine.
Mother from closed adoption Era
Whose son’s adopte “professed” to be
LDS religion? My son never practiced
that professed religion. So I am assuming
it looked good on paper to social worker.
G
Yes, Gale, professing to be LDS would look good to a social worker. 😦 Unfortunately, I know all to well about parents who claim to abide by its precepts but whose actions are far from the same. I see it happen all the time with open adoption situations in the LDS church that are then capriciously closed by the adoptive couples. How can they claim they are being honest with their fellow man when they do that kind of stuff? Or then there is always the situation with contested adoptions. How many high profile cases are pending in Utah against LDS affiliated adoption agencies OR adoptive parents? Five or six?
At any rate, you are right. The truth needs to be told over and over and over again until people wake up and start listening.
M.
Thank you for giving a voice for all of us that were pushed into adoption by family and church councilers !!! They are not the ones to live with the regrets and heart aches 😪😪😪 The adoptive family was suppose to continue to send me pictures…..they sent me two and then no more, even if I continued to ask 😪😪😪 They must have feared me !!! I learned one thing from going through it that whatever dicitions I made in the future I made knowing that I made them and had to live with the outcomes, which I easier could do !!!
They aren’t the ones left to live with the pain adoption brings and yet we know from past experience that they will also never be the ones to apologize for what happened to so many of us women.