Safe Haven Baby Boxes: Get out of the way! It’s a birthday party!

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Znachko, famously at least for me, likes to say weird things in public. Things that anyone attuned to authentic adoptee experience instead of romantic adoption agitprop,  even if they believed it, would keep their trap shut about for fear of walking away with a bloody nose.  When she speaks at baby box blessings, for instance, she refers to the day a baby is boxed up and left behind, as “a birthday party waiting to happen.”  Continue Reading →

Can Adoption Make You Mentally Ill?

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One person tells their story and soon 5 more people pop out of the closet with theirs. Everybody has a horror story. Everyone is angry. Everyone is blown out and blown up.  Adoption is our beit noir. Social media is our purgatory– our  purge-a-tory,–a place to purge ourselves, to, “normalize” our abnormal lives We are not alone. Continue Reading →

Another Day in NAMville: Adoption creates opportunities. Adoption is beautiful.

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The site regularly pimps adoption. This site wet-dreams over National Adoption Month. This site celebrates every new adoption story in the press, every infertility solved, every infant saved from the “abortion mill”  through the “adoption option.” This site sighs dreamiy with tales of reunion where 30, 40, 50 years or more have been spent in anger, grief, paper trails, official and unofficial lies, and legal wranglings. This site encourages vulnerable women to labor and bring forth children for other more responsible worthy people to take for their own. Continue Reading →

My Ambiguous Adoption Dreamhood or Am I a Good Adoptee?

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Anyway,  the  Big Picture episode generated nightmares. It traumatized me. I dreamed repeatedly that Dottie came to me at night to spirit me away. She wore a long dark hooded coat or a cape, I couldn’t see her face.  She was just a dark, Gothic figure.  I think this is very Jungian. She kidnapped me whenever she came into my dreams.  She took me through the backdoor into the backyard.  Then I’d wake up so I don’t know what happened after that. The mystery of me would never be solved. Continue Reading →

My NAM Basket was poked. Sorry, adoption is not normal and adoptees don’t have normal lives

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Adoption is not normal, Mayor Senter, It is a paradigm of family, political, and societal dysfunction and pretend greased by greed.  The public, church, politicians, and media romanticize adoption and adopted people as long as we behave.  We are always babies with no agency of our own, always and forever in need of guidance. Special interests across the political spectrum objectify us to meet their own personal and political ends. Abortion. Evangelism. Infertility. Welfare. Whatever d’jour  We are their propaganda. If we object to being objects, commodities, gifts, moral lessons, and eternal infants, object to fitting in, object to our secret government files, object to our ‘”better life”  we are ungrateful–or crazy! You need help! We’ll pray for you!  I’m sorry you had a bad experience!! Shut up! Continue Reading →

Michigan: Baby bopping and boxing with Bethany Christian Services

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So why is Bethany so invested in “safe delivery” including baby boxes?   Do we really have to guess? I checked the Michigan Department of Health and  Human Services webpage  Bethany isn’t alone in this battle for babies. It’s just the biggest. Every adoption agency in the state is in the game. Continue Reading →

Adoptee Deportation: An American Injustice.

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Unfortunately, many adoptive parents did not research or verify citizenship status at the time of adoption or follow through on the citizenship process. Some say they were unaware of naturalization requirements and believed citizenship was automatic upon adoption finalization. Some claim to have been misled about citizenship procedures by their adoption agencies, courts, lawyers, or federal immigration authorities. Some believed that it was up to the adoptee, at the age of majority, to choose their citizenship status. In some cases, adoptive parents disrupted the adoption, and either “rehomed” the children they brought to the US or turned them over to the state foster care system where they lingered with no legal closure. Continue Reading →

Last Call for Papers: Activist and Community Perspectives–10th Biennial Adoption Initiative Conference

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It’s Sunday night and I’m working on something that won’t get done until tomorrow…maybe. So, to keep my 2021 NAM record intact, I’m sending this conference announcement along: 10th Biennial Adoption Initiative Conference sponsored by St. John’s University and Montclair State University, for March 25-26, 2022.  Continue Reading →

We Lost Another One. In Memoriam: Addie Recoy (1965-2021)

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Addie Recoy, longtime adoptee rights activist and Bastard National, passed away yesterday after a long battle with cancer, She celebrated her 56th birthday two weeks ago. Addie didn’t like attention and didn’t want the seriousness of her illness made public. Only a handful of very close friends knew, about her condition, and her passing has been a shock to us all. I don’t know if an obituary will be published, (if it is, I will add it)  but friends and colleagues are posting memories and condolences throughout social media. You can read some of their tributes on her Facebook page. Continue Reading →