Help our lovable Susan Ito win!!!!
Oct 15, 2007 Blogging
Help Me Fill My Kitchen with Kitsch « ReadingWritingLiving
This is important, people! That napkin dispenser must fulfill its destiny by completing her orange-ish, napkin-obsessed kitchen!!!!
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Tags: wordpress
A rundown
Oct 15, 2007 Adoption
It won’t be complete or necessarily coherent.
First the panel. I was nervous, nobody else seemed nervous although Jenna says she was. (Oh my god, people, I just have to say that her husband is as handsome as his wife is lovely and he looks scarily like their son! Nick is gonna be a heart breaker and one can only imagine that Parker will follow in his footsteps!)
Ok, so Shannon presented a hugely moving paper about the voices of her children’s first mothers, their absence in the discourse and her struggle to figure out how best to serve them. Then I spoke (I took Becca’s advice and told everyone I was nervous so there was a murmuring sound of support right off the bat). Then Susan spoke about her blogging journey and she included a piece of her blog that I’ve loved and I got a little choked up. And then Jenna was sort of a grand finale because she had this forceful, inspiring look at first mother blogging and it was a great way to end the panel, with this triumphant assertive paper about the voices of first moms. Then we put a whole bunch of blogs up on the chalkboard and kicked ourselves for not making a hand-out.
Highlights for me — meeting a woman in person I’ve talked to via email who lives here in town and is a first mom and who I want to hang out with more; meeting Marley Greiner (who also lives here in town) and who is NOT scary like I was afraid she was and is, in fact, totally approachable and nice! Then there was this very cool part where I saw this woman and noticed her tag and thought, “Mia, naw, it’s not that common a name but really!” And I kept noticing it and then in the conference she said, “I have a blog” and I realized! It was Mia’s Saving Grace! I love her blog!! I also got to meet Abebech but only for like an instant.
I took Brett to see Outside Looking In and even though I had to stand outside the auditorium with Madison who was mad spinning girl and unable to sit still because she is, of course, only three, I got to see it, too. Brett cried afterwards because he says that he often feels like the well-meaning but misguided parents in the film and he also still struggles with being witness to the surrender. He said (in part), “Sometimes I don’t know what to do with all of the sadness I feel about it all” and I said (as if I’m Queen of the Answers) that I think you use the sadness to inspire you to do the best you can. There’s no turning back so we’ve got to move forward with as much love and compassion as we have.
My own realizations:
1. I need to plan a trip to see Jessica’s mom again. We need to meet her aunts. I need to talk to Jessica about getting this firmly in place.
2. I need to keep thinking on the presence of possible half-siblings and how to handle that (on Madison’s paternal side) while maintaining the necessary boundaries for the rest of my family (including Jessica).
3. I need to find more compassion for the adoptive parents who frustrate me. I need to react more with kindness and find a place to understand them even when I don’t agree with them.
And you know what? This will probably be one of those things that I forget about in a month but I’d love to do a very mini-conference in Columbus for open adoption folks. I mean really mini. I’m going to be thinking about that and hitting up my new in real life friend Kate (hear that Kate???) to help. And our first scheduled speaker can be JENNA! Because nervous or not, she did a great job and I think she’s due to take over the world as soon as Parker is on solids, no kidding.
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Tags: Becca, Erica, Madison, open adoption, wordpress
And with that I am done!!
Oct 13, 2007 Adoption, Writing
The presentation is OVER and it was FUN (once my knees stopped knocking) and the other papers were FABULOUS and I got to meet a ton of people I’d either never met or only met virtually including two people from Columbus!
I can’t write more because I’m both wired and tired, which is a deadly combination.
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I’m not nervous anymore
Oct 12, 2007 Adoption, Writing
We got here too late to do the open mike I agreed to do (must remember to email organizer) and I only got to go to the very last session but it was really really moving. I want to write about it more but I’m tired and Madison is literally bouncing off things in the room. (She’s spinning and ricocheting off of the furniture.)
I took notes for my book during the session because I was so inspired. I’m thinking about choice and the context of choice and the way hindsight changes our interpretation of things so that it’s all fluid. And I’m thinking about how I want to write about why I won’t write about Jessica’s decision to place Madison with us. That’s how I want to start the book — by explaining why I won’t talk about her decision to place and why there’s a whole lot of the story I’m leaving out. But I’m going to make the leaving out underscore the point of the box (because I think I’ve figured out the point of the book.)
Enough. I’m exhausted. Time to hit it.
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Tags: Madison
Things
Oct 12, 2007 Adoption, The Story of My Life
Things I didn’t have time to do yesterday before our trip:
- Finish the article due today (I got an extension);
- Pad my presentation paper enough (I padded it two hundred words and they didn’t make a damn bit of difference time wise);
- Have a clothing crisis to find three presentable outfits;
- Learn how how to do my new haircut, which no longer looks impressive at all and just looks messy and sad.
- Comment on the news (Congratulations Doris! Congratulations Al!).
Things that freak me out:
- People who insinuate to me that their child’s first mom was basically a handy conduit for their child that accidentally was conceived in her body (have these people not read my journal? don’t they know I’m the wrong person to say this to?)
- Road rage;
- The number of thirty-something women on myspace of my past acquaintance who say something like, “I refuse to grow up if growing up means not being cool” or “I am so hip that I refuse to actually behave like a thirty-something person and I see this as mature”;
- The fact that I haven’t had a clothes crisis yet and we leave in two hours.
Things that bring me joy:
- That my mother-in-law (visiting her youngest son and his family in Portland) is coming home with two dresses for Madison from the Hanna Andersson outlet;
- That I’m going to meet some very interesting people even though I will probably do it with a haircut that looks like a rug, in clothes that I should have vetted first, and while reading a paper that’s too short despite the padding;
- The kids, in theory. Actually they’re being annoying this morning;
- My husband who hasn’t yet been annoying but he’s getting close.