Why Can't They Just Appreciate A Good Home?

This has been a week of "Why can't they just appreciate having a good home?"  Five of those comments came from women who have adopted one or more children who are under age 13.  Women I suspect have given a baby up for adoption made two comments.  One women seems to have never had children.

The best I could tell them was to start reading the web sites and blogs that are about adoption to try to get a feel for what adoptees are feeling.  But you know what, one cannot "make" someone understand.  Each person has to get to that point with education and some never do.  Come on if anyone is reading this and make comments with your feelings.  We can make a difference, but it will take all of us working together.

Until next time,
Alice
Birthmothers: Women Who Have Relinquished Babies for Adoption Tell Their StoriesBecause I Loved You: A Birthmother's View of Open Adoption

Book Lists on Adoption

There are many book lists on adoption.  Most are written by one of the adoption triad---adoptee, parent giving birth, or adoptive parent.  I was just recently looking at the books listed on the Post Adoption Center for Education and Research of California (PACER) web site http://pacer-adoption.org many of these books can be purchased from Amazon.com 

If you are really interested in what is right and what is wrong with the adoption process, take time to read several of these books from each prospective.  You may be surprised and want to know more .

Until next time,
Alice

Getting Heard

I try to read a few of the blogs and web sites on adoption every night.  I always check Adoption Experience Workshop by adoptee, Joy Miller, since I know her.  Today's blog post has a great idea that is inexpensive and would let folks know there is another side to adoption and let adoptees and birthmothers know there are resources and emotional support for them.  She is advocating for putting short ads in the adoption section of newspapers with the ads seeking homes for babies or ads seeking babies for families.  Read what she has to say at  http://adoptionexperienceworkshop.blogspot.com/

I cannot improve on  Joy's suggestion, so until next time,
Alice
Search Amazon.com for adoptees and birthmothers

Keeping my Promise

At the AAC Conference, I said I would help right a great injustice to the adoption triad, especially birthmothers and adoptees.  I am working on an article that I hope will be published in a major magazine.  I expect many of you have done that too.  On a smaller scale, Joy Miller, an adoptee, and I are co-hosting a public meeting at our local library on Sunday, April 25, 2010 to talk about what we learned at the AAC Conference.  I will be adding links to organizations on our attendee list.  Please be patient as I learn how to make the components of this blog do what I want them to do.  So far I have not mastered that.  It is somewhat like a cat that does as it pleases or nothing at all.  I will keep working at it!  Be sure to check Joy's blog, Adoption Experience Workshop.

I have learned that the estimated population of Missouri in 2009 was about 6 million, which is the estimated number of adoptees in the United States.  If there are a million and a half adoptees that cannot get their birth certificates, that is equal to Idaho's population. 

Until next time,
Alice