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A new friend from the AAC conference and I were reflecting on how many folks there could be out there who don't know that support resources such as American Adoption Congress exist. I was reminded of all the time that I was unaware that adoption-healing, and the politics of adoption, were finally being talked about.
Not long after our conversation, I was looking through the American Classifieds paper (that cournecopia of great stuff that you didn't even know you needed) and I came to that awful category, "Adoption". Loving, secure couple seeks to give your infant a wonderful life... all expenses paid, etc. It occured to me what a great place this Adoption section would be to advertise resources such as AAC.
ADOPTEE? BIRTHMOTHER? Resources and emotional support are available...
This type of announcement could run in hometown papers, magazines, etc. American Classifieds would be an example of a grass-roots, low-cost investment. Another benefit of running it in American Classifieds in the Adoption category is that its presence in that section could heighten the awareness of potential adoptive parents, and the public, that adoption has many facets beyond procuring a baby.
I'm really excited about the potential for this idea. I may begin with running an ad directing people to Adoption Experience Workshop....
Great idea! Maybe lots of people will run an ad in their hometown paper.
ReplyDeleteAlice
That is a great idea, but please don't call people who gave birth "birthmothers." Those of us who lost children to adoption really hate that term. It reminds us that we were used as breeding animals by economically stable married couples who were in a position to convince social workers that they were better to be parents of our children. How about "natural mothers" or "exiled mothers" or "discarded mothers"?
ReplyDeleteI think about this exact "term" delima often. The truth is the best.
ReplyDeleteCall me who I am......"mother".
Call the woman who raised my daughter who she is....."adoptive mom/mother".
It is the truth........
Hi all who've commented on this- I wish words weren't so hard and multifaceted! I'm reading up on current thoughts on verbiage but am still using the term I learned growing up- birthmother- which to me means "Mother," or "real" mother, for lack of a better term, and "real" is a problematic term in itself! I hope while we adoptees learn to make new associations with these words, all natural moms can hang in there. While you are indeed Mothers, straightforward and true, adoptees have two "mothers," both different, and it feels insane to not have a way to understand that they both can exist as "mother," though they are two distinct people.
ReplyDeleteI guess, learning the term "birthmother" as I did, I associate the prefix "birth" with gestation, bond, birth, and nature. I associate my adoptive mom with the day-to-day "mothering" that she provided. I feel pretty secure in saying that, from the adoptee point of view, familiar words are just that, and the primacy of our understanding of who our Mothers are are the same primal feelings you have toward us. You ARE "Mother," the one-and-only in the most sacred way, and no word can take that away from any of us.
"... I'm reading up on current thoughts on verbiage but am still using the term I learned growing up- birthmother.."
ReplyDeleteNo offense Joy, but how is it you learned this term growing up? I mean, the term was never used in the 60's & 70's, in fact it wasn't used until the mid-late 80's. So it isn't exactly when you were growing up.
Hi Anonymous-
ReplyDeleteSure I learned the term (I won't write it) while I was growing up. I was in my teens in the 80's, and the teens are to me certainly a growing-up time.