1. Got heads up on a project to try out for that has me kind of excited. I like the start of things — the research and planning and learning something new. I love it!

2. I wrote a guest post on the Bitch blog on (surprise!) adoption and it got hit by a troll. It’s true that there are a few (very few in my experience) women who do not grieve the loss of their children to adoption but I don’t think we should create policy based on people who AREN’T hurt. To me, that’s a little bit like not putting seat belts in cars because most people don’t crash.

3. Also? I don’t like it when people think that adoption criticism automatically means anti-adoption. I’m not anti-adoption; I’m anti-adoption industry. (And when I say industry here, I don’t mean the ethical professionals who do their best to serve women, children and adult adopted people well — I’m talking about the industry that’s about making money.)

4. It makes me realize how deeply ingrained our stereotypes are though, whenever I talk to people about adoption who aren’t in adoption-land like us blog people. There are all these assumptions about birth parents and adoptive parents (birth parents are automatically incapable of parenting, adoptive parents are automatically worthy) that run so deep. I can remember having those assumptions up-ended for myself and the cold water shock of realizing that I had never really thought critically — not truly — about adoption. Sure, I knew exceptions but my assumptions were all based on stereotypes.

5. I bought advent calendars last night and this is the course of Madison’s conversations now: “Do they all have the same amount of candy? Does one have more? They have 24 pieces? They both do? 24? There are 24 pieces? And they have the same? Can I eat one now? Why not? When is December 1st? And then we each get the same pieces? But it’s hard to wait! It’s very hard to wait when you’re five! Does Noah have more candy or does mine? Did you put the calendars up high? Why? Can I see one? Can I have one? But it’s hard to wait!” Seriously. I don’t know if I can make it ’til Christmas. I may sit her down and eat all 48 pieces in front of her as punishment for driving me insane. Ok, I won’t because that would be mean but I might contemplate doing it.

6. You know what’s harder than waiting for something when you’re five? Listening to a five-year old wait for something when you’re almost 40. I know whereof I speak.

7. My grad school application is officially in progress. I’m missing one reference letter and just wrote a follow-up. I can see this on the OSU site — it’s wandering through the process. After Thanksgiving I’m going to apply for my back-up school.

8. I figured out my OSU GPA with my PSU GPA. My OSU one was not so hot and my PSU one was white-hot. I was worried that I would end up with a sucky cumulative but actually it’s not bad. In fact, it’s good. This despite a D in French and an F in Russian. Look at how I can’t brag on myself without reassuring you that I am still an idiot! Yeah, it’s fun to be in my brain! (Dawn’s brain: Dawn you ROCK! But not comparatively so don’t go getting a big head about it!)

I am relieved that I don’t have to click buttons anymore or ask you all to click buttons. When I get the results, I’ll let you know. I am totally hung over on the vestiges of this cold and not thinking all that clearly right now (working on my third cup of coffee in order to WAKE UP because work work work is waiting waiting waiting).

Well, we don’t know what the results will be but this has been a heady past few days and I appreciate the support.

I was witness to a conversation that happened between two black & white adoption thinkers the other day, tangentially related to the contest and it illustrated how hard these discussions really are. I think that both sides kind of understood where the other was coming from but they weren’t stepping outside of their own boxes enough to really get it and so it was a conversation that didn’t go anywhere and no one was heard and no minds were changed. Frustrating.

When I was watching this documentary, I got very discouraged. Basically there’s a strong French lobbying group that is party to kickbacks from adoption agencies. (I didn’t totally get the points system they were talking about because I watched this when my fever was at its worst and was pretty out of it.) The group is called SERA Romania and they create some really powerful propaganda. Those horrific black and white pictures of children crumpled and abandoned in institutional iron cribs? Those were SERA’s. There is no way you can look at those photos and not want to do something. And for many of us, that something is to adopt.

Infertility does a number on your heart and on your self-esteem. I never felt as petty as I did when I was mourning a miscarriage. I was jealous of pregnant women, trapped in a cramped box of self-pity and full of grief and rage. I didn’t like myself very much. And I was tired of not liking myself very much. To me, that was one of the worst parts of infertility is how cut off I felt from everyone because my tragedy engulfed me and defined me. It was all I was for a little while.

When I decided to adopt, the lid came off my box. Where before I’d been a small, petty person now I was a large-hearted, hopeful person. People celebrated my decision for the most part. Not just people I knew, but people out there in the world with their pro-adoption sentiments. It would have been very very very very easy to be lured into that mindset. Groups like SERA encourage this kind of entitlement. Our natural pride of place and self-centeredness encourages it, too. We have clean water here and sturdy houses. Wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing to share all this with a child from a less fortunate home? You flip on the tv and find a man exhorting you to look into this child’s deep brown eyes and send the price of a cup of coffee to feed her. And you think, “Wouldn’t it be better if I just came to adopt her?” We have stories (some of them true, some of them not) of women who beg foreigners to take their children away to a better place. We hear about poor people who sell their children into slavery so they can feed their other babies. We could adopt! We will adopt! We are called! And our infertility then has meaning! Our losses have meaning! We were meant to save THIS child who was meant to be OUR child!

It’s heady stuff. How can we not fall for it?

And when someone questions us, it shakes the foundation of our sense of self. What if those children aren’t orphans? What if there is another way to save the ones who are? (Look at this woman — she moved to India instead of asking her children to move here!)

When I watch Linda Robak cry in the documentary for the abandoned Romanian children, I believe her. I believe that she feels that the best way to save those children is to get them the hell out of Romania. I don’t know (the documentary doesn’t tell me) what she thinks of the woman in the countryside whose daughter was stolen. I don’t know if she and whistleblower Roelie Post agree on anything. It’s so complicated. I’m not sure of the answers. But I do believe that we have to get the money out of it to make sense of it.

Some of us stand by the absolute belief that our adoptions are clean and so we’re not part of this. But if there is suspicion anywhere in adoption, we adoptive parents are all suspect; we are all responsible. This does not mean that we are all bad. I think most of us are trying very hard to be good. It’s just that in this black & white discussion I was privy to, I kept hearing excuses about why these issues didn’t matter in this case and in that case. I didn’t hear anyone unpacking privilege. I didn’t hear anyone admitting that even if it’s all clean and it’s all good as far as we can control, there is still bad stuff outside of our control and we are benefiting from it.

I’ll repeat — we need to get the money out of it to make sense of it. If people are profiting by moving children from one country or family to another, then we need to watch those people closely. Not all of them are looking to exploit kids (I believe this) but they need to be watched by disinterested parties. (Look at this salary chart over at Pound Pup Legacy. This should concern us.)

Sometimes I watch a documentary like Search a Child, Pay Cash and I feel so discouraged. I think the lobby is too strong. The lure of orphans too much to contend with. There are too many of us whose good intentions override our sense of justice. I think about how the kids are caught in limbo and how stopping adoptions means some of those kids drop off cliffs. I don’t know what the answers are but I know that we start to unravel it by asking questions and examining our own complicity.

It’s not enough just to say, “I am not like those parents!” We have to actively fight the policies that make unethical adoptions possible especially when we promote adoption. If we want adoption to remain a viable option for children and/or parents in need, we need to do our part to be sure that’s just what it is. If we want to truly save orphans, we need to do what we can to be sure that they’re orphans. If we want to truly allow women the opportunity to consider adoption, we need to do what we can to be sure that their consideration is free of coercion. Otherwise we can’t complain when we fall under the cloak of suspicion. The suspicion is justified if we’re not using our privilege for good.

I know this is more of the same really. I was just so sad when I was watching that conversation and seeing the same tired old good intentions get played for sympathy without any real work for change. It’s just not enough. We’re not doing enough.

An adoptive mom on my facebook said in response to my “vote for me” post, “Are there any moderates in this contest?” Because she thinks I’m a little extreme.

I know that theoretically people see me as extreme but I swear to goodness, I think I’m pretty even-handed.

Not that I would have thought so at the start of things. I think I would have felt a lot like Heather says she felt when she was first reading my blog, “I don’t think she knows this, but waaay back in the day, reading Dawn’s blog made me really defensive. I was wholly invested in the idea that there was a Right Way to do adoption that could make it positive for everyone involved, and that there were black-and-white distinctions between birth parents and adoptive parents and their place in an adopted child’s life.”

I thought all this, too — trust me, I know from defensive! The first time I read the antiadoption blogs? I flipped out! They scared the heck out of me! I had this idea that adoption matched up sweet and nice with perfectly matching pieces — a mother who could not parent and me over here with my big, open heart (what a savior!). I didn’t really know about corruption or coercion and I thought the baby scoop era was a finite period that had no bearing on our enlightened times. I just didn’t know. And the propaganda for saving babies is strong — very very strong. When people heard I was adopting? Oh they were so moved! How lovely of me! How wonderful!

But that’s just one side of adoption. Adoption is creating a family but only after a family is lost. Adoption is joy but only because someone else is grieving. Adoption means your kid gets parents but s/he had to lose parents first. In other words, when we think about adoption we usually only think about one side and not the story that comes before and the story that comes before matters. It matters a lot.

(It doesn’t have to negate the joy, mind you. I don’t think it has to do that but it has to exist with it. You can’t have one without the other and this is the truth that adoptive parents have to embrace even if it’s painful for us [because if we don't, we create greater pain for our children.])

If we can’t keep our eye on that hard part of the story, we’re going to be party to people being used and children being sold. If we aren’t willing to recognize the dark side of adoption, we will be in collusion with the bad guys. As adoptive parents or wannabe adoptive parents, we must demand transparency and we must be willing to look critically at our own choices and practices.

Here are some facts for any new-to-me visitors:

• In the United States, agencies still coerce women into placing their babies for adoption using tactics we thought went out with poodle skirts. (This article targets Christian agencies and pregnancy crisis centers but there are plenty of secular agencies whose tactics are equally — if not more — underhanded.)
• Some agencies will shuttle women out of states with laws that don’t favor adoptive parents to states where they can do things like forgo contacting putative fathers. Utah is famous for its lax adoption laws, which is why some agencies and attorneys will fly women there.
• Some adoption professionals will encourage wannabe parents to say whatever it takes to get the baby even if they have no intentions of honoring their agreements. (Remember, open adoption agreements are not legally enforceable in most states and even in the states where they are enforceable, few judges are willing to rule against legal parents.)
• Some orphans are not orphans at all. They’re children stolen from their parents with the express purpose of being sold to foreign adopters. (To see how effective lobbying continues to drive these practices, invest some time to watch this documentary.) This is important. The children languishing in orphanages are real and their trauma is real but how they got there isn’t always clear. Facilitators will lie. Not every abandoned child was truly abandoned.

Children have always needed families but our demand has outpaced the supply and unscrupulous people have stepped in because we have the cash to pay to be parents. As Gunther Verheugen says in this documentary, “As long as there is a demand for children, there will be a search to find ways to create a supply.”

We are the demand. They are creating the supply to meet us.

Now listen — I believe that many us involved in adoption are good people. I believe that most of the social workers, agencies and lawyers are trying their best to be ethical and I believe that most of us adoptive parents are not so blinded by baby lust that we will do anything to get our babies. I believe that there are children that need families and first parents who want to freely exercise their right to place their children for adoption. I believe that. But I also believe that we are all of us tainted by the bad and that adoption is deeply stained by injustice. And I believe that we adoptive parents have a special obligation to talk about it and challenge it because it is OUR money and OUR demand that is driving the industry.

Also? People listen to us more. If a birth parent sounds the alarm, people say she’s just whining for a do-over. If an adoptee complains, people say she’s ungrateful. But when we say it, people are more likely to listen because we are less likely to have an agenda the can simply dismiss.

I told my mom yesterday that sometimes adoptive parents will read me and then email or comment and start talking about guilt and do I want us always to feel guilty? No, I don’ t feel guilty and I think guilt is kind of a selfish luxury I try not to allow myself. No, what I feel is responsible. With due credit to Spider-Man’s Uncle Ben, with great power [and privilege] comes great responsibility. Let’s live up to it, ‘kay?

I am actually very competitive. I’m so competitive that I refuse to compete. Really. The first time I was nominated for a blog contest (it was the first year of the BOB awards), I asked to be removed. For one thing, I was up against friends and I don’t LIKE competing against friends. And for another thing we all know that any blog contest with voting isn’t even a popularity contest — it’s something even less relevant than that; it’s a contest of whose friends are most into winning and the only thing worse than competing against friends is competing FOR friends to compete against friends.

I have no delusions. I write a nice blog here and all but there are many many fabulous adoption blogs and none of my favorites are on the nomination sheet. This isn’t any grand conspiracy either — it’s just that only four adoption blogs got nominated.  The press release says, “TheBump.com will showcase up to 10 of the most noteworthy finalists for each of the 15 blog categories”, which means there were six empty spaces that by rights should have been filled in by some folks on my blogroll.

I shoulda paid attention when Jenna announced she’d nominated me because then I would have nominated HER because she’s one of my favorites (obviously) but also because we’ll know the times they are a-changing when a first parent wins an adoption category in a mommy blog contest.

(The thing about Jenna is that she’s like a Trojan horse of a blog when it comes to adoption reform. This is why she pisses so many people off on either side — she’s someone who resolutely walks the tightrope because she has a “good” open adoption but she doesn’t think that lets anyone off the hook. I mean, what she writes? It’s really transgressive because you can’t label her with a free and easy label. Think about it — she got birth motherhood into REDBOOK for crying out loud! And not happy-dappy birth motherhood either. That’s some powerful activism right there.)

This is also why I won’t keep the prize if I win. If I win the first round, the gift certificate will go to Pennie. If I win the second, it’ll go to Ethica. Because this isn’t a contest I’d feel like I EARNED and I’m a whole lot more comfortable going out and begging for votes if it’s not about ME. You know? I also like the counterpoint of specifically giving the prizes to the people who are missing from the contest (i.e., a first mom and an agency working for the rights of adoptees and first parents).

Anyway, vote for me zillions of times between now and 11:59pm EST Monday (I wrote to the folks running the contest and they said it’s kosher to hit refresh and vote a bunch of times if you want). And now I’m going to go lie face down in my bed because I am sick sick sick with a sore throat and fever.

I believe that it’s Jenna who nominated me for a “Best Adoption Blog” award over at The Bump and it’s awfully nice of her especially since really she deserves a nomination herself. No matter what happens with the contest (although it’d be really nice to win!) the site has definitely upped my visitors and so I wanted to give new folks a run down of our adoption story.

I’ve been blogging since 2001 and I’ve been blogging our adoption story since (checking for the very first entry under the adoption category) October 2002. There are A LOT of entries in that category!

We adopted our daughter through a local (Columbus Ohio) agency. We started the homestudy process sometime in 2003. We matched with a woman expecting a baby boy in November of 2003. She chose to parent about a month after (before we met her) and then we matched with Pennie in January 2004 and Madison came home to us three days after her birth in April 2004.

We have a fully open adoption with Pennie and Pennie just gave birth to Madison’s baby brother, Roscoe about three weeks (!) ago. We also have a bio son named Noah who was seven when Madison came home. Ours is a transracial adoption (Brett, Noah & I are white; Madison is African American.)

In that time, we struggled. We struggled as we considered what type of adoption would work for our family. We struggled with our decision to adopt transracially. We considered openness and what it might mean for us. We didn’t start ready to have a fully open adoption — with cards, letters, phone calls, pictures and regular visits — we grew into it. This blog charts our growth.

I had help in navigating the challenges of adoptive parenting, transracial adoption and openness because I have mentors. Two (of many) of these mentors include LisaV (adoptive mom who has given me so much encouragement and positive support) and  Susan Ito (adult adoptee who has been generous in her insight to Madison’s experience).

This blog also charts my growth as I became more and more convinced that adoption needs reform — particularly domestic infant adoption, which obviously is the kind of adoption with which I’ve had the most experience. I’ve written a lot about that, too. My interest in reform came out of my own experiences but was also inspired by the activist work of adoptees and first parents like Jenna, like Nicole and like Suz.

Adoption has been good to me, obviously since I have the fabulous child to prove it. But understanding and appreciating my privileged role as an adopter is an ongoing journey (one recorded here on my blog). Sometimes people who want to talk about the need for ethical reform get dismissed as cranks but exploring the difficult and ugly parts of adoption has made me a better adoptive parent. I believe this without a doubt. It’s not easy, goodness knows, but my daughter deserves nothing less. And that’s what my blog is about.

Here are some pics (you can click to make them bigger):