this woman’s work

But instead I’m going to write more about adoption.

Kathleen wrote:

I take issue with the idea that a refusal to sign adoption papers is the same as “deciding to parent.” My view is no doubt colored by working in family court. However, the idea that all parents who choose not to go through with adoptions go onto to actually parent the child is patently false.

My bias is to assume the best intent of families making adoption plans (not being forced to make adoption plans or else lose their children to social services). There are individual stories about terrible people who make adoption plans who do not follow through and then are abusive or hateful of use the children to manipulate partners, etc. There are also individual stories about adoptive parents who are abusive or hateful or use the children to manipulate partners. But we make policy on the most common scenarios and most commonly, people are pretty good.

Some of the antiadoption activists make a point of collecting stories about adopters who kill and obviously, this is an argument full of holes. There are many reasons to criticize adoption but pulling out stories of abusive adopters isn’t all that convicing to this (not abusive) adopter. Likewise circulating stories about terrible almost-birth parents doesn’t convince me that every adoption that doesn’t happen is a tragedy.

There are general truths about adoption and then there are specific truths about every individual adoption. Parents who consider adoption are given the same rights as parents NOT considering adoption. That means that some parents (who considered adoption or not) are going to be awesome and amazing and that some parents (who considered adoption or not) are going to be bloody awful.

Wendy asked (on the livejournal post), “How saintly can we be? I mean really? (we being adoptive parents) At some point isn’t there an “okay enough fucking with us, really now, get your shit together now” moment?”

We don’t have to be saints. We can rant, rave, feel bitter, hate the parents who chose to parent and weep for the baby that isn’t ours. Like I said, we can feel however we want to feel but we can’t dictate policy on the feelings of a few. That’s just the reality. That’s just what it is to adopt. And that’s also why we need the support of ethical adoption professionals who will help guide us when we are at our most fragile.

And yes, absolutely there can come a point where people can say, “Enough of this — make your decision or don’t.” The desperation that we can feel when we’re waiting to adopt can sometimes make us say yes to situations that aren’t working for us. Again, an ethical adoption professional can be a guide there; they can encourage you to say no. (I am amazed by the number of hopeful adoptive parents who are put out to sea by agencies and lawyers who shrug and say, “Well, hang in there. You never know what might happen.” That’s bullshit.)

I have learned more about the situation I was blogging about before (Cecily put it out there so I feel comfortable linking now) and it really is a truly shitty situation. But knowing how shitty it is doesn’t change how I feel about making generalizations. It says a lot about this almost adoption but not much about adoption in general. (I’m really wondering about the agency/lawyer here. I think they dropped the ball but don’t know for certain.)

My blogroll is in flux. I’m moving a bunch of people over to Kinja on the advice of Amber. Mostly I’m moving people who don’t seem to “ping.” I usually only check people when my blogroll says they’ve updated so I’m forever missing folks. I’m also moving all Livejournal reads to my placeholder friends page. Please ignore our dust.

It lets me update offline and do all kinds of wacky formatting and picture insert and then renders the html for me, all nice and pretty. It also allows me to input whatever I’m listening to in iTunes, which is totally useless but still something that tickles my fancy.

Thanks to those of you who wrote to support me in my stupid writing angst. It’s slightly — only slightly — better today. Tomorrow I’ll have a big chunk of time to work on it and hopefully I’ll get something back when I sit down to write.

What I realized after all of the scribbling I’ve already done (typing, really, but scribbling has a nicer flow there) is that my original plan to do this as an essay is still the best way to do it. But first I had to do tons of research and interviewing and more research to find that out. See, there’s a lot to this antiadoption thing, way more than it seems. You’ve got your adoption history, your adoption reform, your compelling personal stories, etc. Just tons of stuff. I wasn’t sure (still am not quite sure) what’s relevant and important and necessary and what’s better left on the curb. I am also struggling with how to make the narrative compelling to those of you who haven’t adopted. That’s the piece I figured out on the drive and forgot when I got home but I think I see a glimmer of it again.

When my muse is playing hide and seek, it always makes me think of this passage about Snufkin trying to capture a song he wants to write and getting disturbed by an inquisitive little creep. There is no avoiding life, darnit. Unless I wanted to live in a garret with a single sputtering candle although then likely I wouldn’t be able to write because I would be thinking about how good a nice, buttered piece of toast would taste if only I had the money to buy it. Garret-living for art’s sake is over-rated.

There are other things making this hard to write and they are the following:

1. It’s emotionally challenging because you may not realize this, but I’m an adoptive mother so you know, reading lines like these — and considering their merit — it not exactly fun: “Adoption is the only kidnapping in the law books where the perpetrators actually get to keep the ransom.” from The Perpetrators of Adoption Crime by Joss Shawyer

2. My writerly confidence was shaken by the Brain Child article that was not meant to be this past summer. Still not quite over that.

3. I really want this clip, which of course makes me afraid to write it because if I don’t write it, they can’t say no. Clever, eh?

I’ll get over it. I whine because whining gives me the ability to get over myself.

Now playing on iTunes: “Silence” from the album Salt by Lizz Wright

Saw this at ThymeWise.net and it looked too fun not to do:
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I know I skipped the moomin posts this weekend but that’s just how I decided to do it from here on out. We’re still checking out Finn Family Moomintroll this week and this excerpt takes place after Moomintroll has been changed into another sort of creature entirely after hiding out in the Hobgoblin’s Hat during a rousing game of hide ‘n seek:
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Sorry about that! Here’s Friday’s moomin, again we’re reading from Finn Family Moomintroll and this is taken from Chapter IV, “In which owing to the Hattifatteners’ night attack the Snork Maiden loses her hair, and in which the most remarkable discovery is made on Lonely Island.”
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We’ve been on the run ALL DAY and now is my first chance to be at home to type something up! So here you go. This is from the book Finn Family Moomintroll. I believe it is first in the series but it’s not the one that gives you the moomin origins. We’ll save that one for another time, I think. One thing I really liked about the moomin books is that at the top of the page is a little one line synopsis and at the front of each chapter is another small summary. This is from the first chapter “In which Moomintroll, Snufkin, and Sniff find the Hobgoblin’s Hat; how five small clouds unexpectedly appear, and how the Hemulen finds himself a new hobby.”
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From “The Secret of the Hattifatteners.” This passage has a good — but difficult to follow — message at the end.
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In the moomin books, I always wanted to be like Snufkin — wise, free and devoted to my art — but I always suspected that I really resembled Sniff — whiny, shrill and selfish. I can admit my affinity for Sniff more easily at 33 1/2 than I could at 6. Here’s an introduction to him, from the short story “Cedric.”
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There won’t be any entries until the evening because Yom Kippur starts at sundown so this moomin will have to hold you for two days. Again, this excerpt is from “The Invisible Child.”
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