Category Archives: Adoption

NAM/NAAM Day 14. Safe Haven Baby Boxes Juggernaut Continues

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Nothing says National Adoption (Awareness) Month more than the current SHBB national janggernaut.  We are just about half-way through this dreadful month, and seven new boxes have been opened–excuse me, blessed–so far. Another is scheduled to open this week.  Who knows what’s in store for us for the rest of the month? Adoption is beautiful! Especially with no pesky parental strings, best practice, and ethics attached. Continue Reading →

NAM/NAAM Say 13. Michigan: On the Winning Track

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n November 8, less than a month after the bills were introduced, both bills were voted favorable out of the Committee on Families, Children, and Seniors. The next day, the House passed both bills,  99-8, and it was transmitted to the Senate. The Michigan legislature, for all intents and purposes, is now in recess so we will have to wait until next year to seal the deal. Continue Reading →

NAM/NAAM Day 11: The Adopted Remember, Veterans Day 2023.

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Adoption severs legal ties, but more importantly, it wipes out identity, genealogy, and historical memory– the right to historical identity and knowledge. Sure some adoptees, moreso today than in the past, can have an easier opportunity to learn where they came from, their history, their context,  and their place in the great family. But do we really? ( So much is missing. (and of course, some bio families disregard those same identity markers. I have been astounded at the people know who have no idea who their grandparents were. much less anyone else.  But, at least they have a path to learning, unlike The Adopted who are just left at the end of a weedy road without a sythe. Continue Reading →

NAM/NAAM Day 10: Hutchinson, Kansas Gets 2 Baby Boxes–from Canada. What’s Up With That?

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The City of Hutchinson, Kansas issued a media release the other day to announce that 2 “Safe Haven Baby Boxes” will be coming to Hutchinson as soon as $50,000 can be raised. Only, they aren’t “Safe Haven Baby Boxes.”  They are “Hope’s Cradles” from Gems for Gems a Canadian non-profit that has installed a couple of their own boxes in Alberta and Manitoba and has a few more locations lined up for Ontario. Continue Reading →

NAM/NAAM Day 9. It’s Out! Susan Kiyo Ito’s “I Would Meet You Anywhere”

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Susan’s words remind me that adoption by design builds secrets– a tangled wall of family, state, and internalized personal rules of identity, history, and self-worth that for some reason are never expected to be broken, without pain to us and others. That’s how adoption works, even in the “best.” Continue Reading →

NAM/NAAM Day 8: Angelika’s Corner: Save Haven Baby Boxes are Amenities?

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Maybe Mrs. Kelsey, in her peripatetic journey across the US to make it a Jesus-approved easier place to abandon your baby, has been staying at upscale hotels with an upscale mobile check-in where she doesn’t have to mess with bothersome registration cards and printouts and can move directly into her comfortable and secure room. Come to think of it, mobile check-in sounds like a 2nd cousin of the baby box procedure, where “desperate moms” can just walk up to the box, drop in Baby Bumble, and hi-tail it back to her own comfortable and secure space.  Maybe she’s even got a bottle of Scotch. Continue Reading →

NAM/NAAM Day 7: I’m Trying Not to Gloat, But….

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here is nothing worse than a sore winner. I’ve seen enough unpleasant people and organizations over the years gloat when they win. I thought I could avoid gloating tonight, but I can’t. As someone who has spent the majority of her life in Ohio, I am tripping tonight with the win of Issue 1 which enshrines abortion rights in the state constitution.  With 95% of the vote counted, it passed 56.6% to 43.4% Continue Reading →

NAM/NAAM 2023 Day 6: How to Say Nobody Cares About Adoptee Rights Without Saying They Don’t

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Yesterday I did a few legislative updates, and it really struck me while doing them–as if I didn’t already know this–that hardly anyone cares about adult adoptees or adoptee civil rights–especially those who have the “authority” to fix things legally such as policy and lawmakers. When compared to the speed which Safe Haven Baby Box legislation passes, records access for adults, even with the successes of the last couple of years, runs a very poor second. Continue Reading →

NAM/NAAM 2004 Day 5: Adoption Agitprop, Annette Kicks It! and I Comment

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November 3rd’s video on the subject of adoption propaganda really struck home with her discussion of among others, the adoptprop myth: “Your mother loved you so much she gave you away.”  While most adoption mythology and adoptprop bounce off my insensitive self, (that is, I don’t take it personally), this one always sets me off. It makes no sense. The height of cognitive adoption dissonance. The height of adoptee commodification. A weird binary of generosity and greed. How is this trope supposed to make someone, especially children, feel secure or good or ultimately safe and loved? Continue Reading →

NAM/NAAM Day 4: Spam. This is what happens if you don’t check your blog

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Due to NAM/NAAM/NaNoPoblano, however, I’m back here. Much to my horror I discovered, as of this moment, 10,428 “comments” await me. 99% of them will be spam.  I thought I had a good spam catcher. Guess not.! Most of them are in Russian, which I know to a certain extent, and are about shoes, CHATbots, and sex. Gotta love those troll farms. Continue Reading →