reunion journal

reunion journal: 6/5/93

It's just hit me like a ton of bricks. I just finished speaking to Jai, the social worker regarding the beyond reunion group meeting tonight, which led me to thinking about being adopted. Then I could feel the anger welling up inside me and I realised what the anger is about. What does it mean to be adopted. I grabbed out Libby Harkness's book "Looking for Lisa" again. I had finished reading it recently and there was something about her book that made me angry and I couldn't think what it was, well now I realise.

Whenever adoption is mentioned it is from the viewpoint of someone other than the adoptee. The grief and pain is seen from our relinquishing mothers or our adoptive families points of view.

In her book Libby quotes from a 1990 debate on the Adoption Information Bill in the New South Wales Legislative Council. Speaking is Marie Bignold, A Call to Australia party member; She said "it represented a gross betrayal by the state of human trust and confidentiality and an 'unjustified invasion' of the private affairs of it's citizens. According to her it was an outrageous piece of social engineering by the state, calculated to do serious harm to the well-being of family life."

Libby goes on to say " But perhaps it is the relinquishing mothers of the past who suffered the real brunt of the social engineering of adoption laws." The focus being on herself, as a relinquishing mother. Why haven't I read anything about the social engineering from we the adopted ones paradigm. Later on she comments "Looking back, she, 'the relinquishing mother' could be forgiven for believing she was a part of some bizzare social experiment."

As the relinquishing mother looks back on her experience of being a participant in something out of her control does she wonder how her son or daughter feels? Does she begin to understand that we don't feel a PART of some bizarre social experiment, we are the PRODUCT OF THAT EXPERIMENT.

As an adoptee I don't look back at at the specifics of a birth and then relinquishment of my child. No , the consequences of my mother's choice shrouds each of my days in so many ways, many of them yet to be understood.