[SchmennaLeigh]

How's everyone coming along?

I just keep balking at statistics. The white and black issues is also somewhat shocking.

I'm not quite halfway through; it's been a hectic week.

[SchmennaLeigh]

Couple of things:

I just read an excerpt from Lynne in Chapter 6. I would like the world to know that not all agencies offer "therapy" to expectant parents, contrary to what she has said.

Moving on:

These women who have received their files; how do they do that? Is that something available nowadays? I'd really like my file to see what those crappy people at the agency had to say about me. Is it possible to get ahold of mine?

*goes back to reading*

[shadowdove]

""I just read an excerpt from Lynne in Chapter 6. I would like the world to know that not all agencies offer "therapy" to expectant parents, contrary to what she has said. ""

Hi Jenna..

What Lynne actually said, in the book ...quote..""It's not like today when you go through therapy, for God's sakes. No. There was no therapy.""
I am 99% sure Lynne was not speaking of 'counselling' from an adoption agency..But, in general, just plain 'therapy', as in a therapist's office. I understood her to be saying no 'therapy' was offered at the maternity home she was held in.

Are you in a closed adoption, Jenna? It was only a few years ago, (I surrendered in 1964), that I finally received my non-identifying information from the adoption agency. And at that, I had to go to the very top of this huge adoption organization to finally get the director of this agency to send me the non-id. Nothing spectacular in it. Now I do know some nmothers that have also received the SW notes along with the non-id info. My daughter received more information in her non-id info packet than I did. I never knew my daughter was in foster care for 6 weeks. It states so in her non-id info packet, but not in mine.. Hope this helps..

Shadowdove (Christine)

oooops... answered my own question, I see you are in an open adoption..

[Jan18]

Is it too late to jump in on this discussion? I read this book a few weeks ago. I am an adoptee who just found her mom 6 mo. ago. My parents were very honest with me as I grew up and asked questions. They told me what the adoption agency told them about my mom and dad. I knew the basics. This book opened up another world of knowledge to me. I had no idea that girls were hidden away, and the embarrassment their families felt.

This book also did start an agrument between my mom and me a few weeks ago. I asked her some questions that she was not ready to answer. She isn't ready to look back at those days when she was carrying me. Maybe in time, but maybe she never will be able to go back to remember that painful time in her life. She was knocked out when she was delivering me, and had to fight to see me once she had awaken from giving birth.

I offered to let her read my copy. She didn't answer either way. Maybe, in a few months I'll offer again.

It was a gut wrenching experience to read this book and read the experiences of these mothers. It is the first adoption book that I have read, and I am glad it is the first one I chose!

[BookMom66]

I hope you don't mind a newbie joining in. I've been trying to find this thread for 2 weeks now.

I am so glad that you are all discussing this book. I am a 40 year old adoptee who has just begun searching because of this book. It has literally changed my life!!

I've always known I was adopted, but had vague feelings that I was probably an unwanted baby or an inconvenience. After reading about all the girls and the trauma they endured I've become much more empathetic towards birthmothers and hope to find mine.

I work in a library and am surrounded by books, but no book has ever affected me like this one. It is also the first book I've read about adoption.

I'm now working on an Adoption Bibliography for our library and hope to find other great books and add them to the collection.

Thanks for listening.

[SchmennaLeigh]

I don't have words to put to what I've read in the past two days. I want to hug all of these women.

More over, the things they have described, emotional state of being post-placement, still holds true for a lot of those things.

[DianeScraps]

I agree that this book is lifechanging.

It has really helped me a lot to understand my parents and grandparents generations, as well as given me chance to start to grasp what so many women went through.

Diane

[Jan18]

I always knew in my heart that my mom didn't want to reliquish me. This book made the feelings of reliquishment so real and raw. I don't think I had a dry eye the entire time I read this book, and it only took me four days to get through it. I couldn't imagine the emotional pain my mom went through. I so desperately wanted to hug her after I read this book and tell her that I understand, but she is not ready to go back to that place yet!

I just can't believe social workers, nurses, parents...thought these girls could just put their babies out of their minds and never look back. It isn't like they got rid of a piece of clothing or a car. They gave a part of themself away, and to never know if they would see that baby again. I think I would have gone crazy!

[BookMom66]

Jan, I feel the same way you do, only I haven't found my mom yet to ask her. I really wanted to talk about this book with my aparents, but they're in their 70's and I didn't want them to feel bad because I am now questioning whether my mom even wanted to give me up. It's not their fault that the social stigma existed and that their dreams of having a family came at someone else's expense.

I just can't stop thinking about all the mothers, and some fathers, too. How could so many girls endure so silently for so many years? How could anyone think that they would be able to resume their lives like nothing had changed. And I can't imagine being raised to be so naive about sex. Well, actually, I can. I was a teenager in the early 80's and my parents stressed respecting yourself (implied abstinence) over discussing the realties of teenage sexual behavior. I think I always had in the back of my mind, though, that my birthmom certainly hadn't been as innocent as my parents were expecting me to remain. It was a strange feeling at the time.

Speaking of sex and naivete, I was doing some research on Akron, OH, which is where I was born, and came across a small 1986 news item from the History of the Akron Health Department. Here it is, "An old 1960 condom law which prohibits the sale of condoms in the city is repealed." Can you imagine that?

[SchmennaLeigh]

I know everyone has their personal story and, for the majority of these women, they are simply telling their own. However, at the end of Madeline's story she got rather preachy on how "all birthmothers" must feel "this way," regarding their intentions and emotions. I did not, for one second, enjoy that. Every firstmother is unique, as made evident by this book.

[merrill1277]

Originally Posted by SchmennaLeigh

I know everyone has their personal story and, for the majority of these women, they are simply telling their own. However, at the end of Madeline's story she got rather preachy on how "all birthmothers" must feel "this way," regarding their intentions and emotions. I did not, for one second, enjoy that. Every firstmother is unique, as made evident by this book.

Jenna, I just read Madeline's story last night and came to the same conclusion. She is projecting her own stuff onto other firstmother's experiences. I could not relate to most of what she was claiming [not only for herself but for others] in the last few pages of her story. For one thing, I personally felt no ambivalence towards my baby but only love and a deep longing to keep (stay with) him. If she felt any ambivalence then all the thoughts, therefore's and shoulds that may have followed that, belong to her, not the majority as she might suppose.

I too am left with a bad taste on that one. Hope to move further along in the book tonight.

[SchmennaLeigh]

Merrill; glad someone else felt like that. I don't like to discount other's stories but the last two or three pages really felt, as you said, like she was projecting.

I'm almost finished.

[lillian47]

I am a birthmother who gave birth to a daughter in 1971 at a unwed mothers home. I have been reading the book but had to put it down for awile as it brought back so many bad memories. My husband is reading the book and he says it answers so many questions for him as to "Why did this happen to you". I have never been able to understand why my parents sent me away and forced me to relinquish my child that I wanted so much to keep.

As my husband has said that by reading the book he understands that it was a social stigma but by the same token he tries to put himself in a parents perspective and he can not understand how parents never wanted to talk about it ever.

Last month my father passed away about a month before he passed away my husband had a talk with him as to why he did what he did and his reaction was to just sit and listen to my husband and never show any remorse.

[SchmennaLeigh]

I just finished the book. I got out of bed to write this.

I will form some more coherent thoughts at a later date, possibly tomorrow or this weekend. If I could have read the book through without moving, eating, sleeping or taking care of Nicholas... all in one fell swoop... it would not have been fast enough. Fessler did a remarkable job. I especially enjoyed the note about the interviews at the very end on how she didn't "prescreen" their stories to come up with any stilted tone in one direction or the other.

All of this on a night where a pregnant firstmom friend of mine who is planning on parenting informed a few of us that she's considering going to a Florence Crittenton home. They don't even allow cell phones.

My heart breaks for all these women. Even today.

[DianeScraps]

I have not finished it yet, but hope too in the next few days.

After seeing Jenna's post - I did some surfing and found this link on the history of the Florence Crittenton homes
http://www.historylink.org/essays/ou...m?file_id=3128
The more I read, the more I become overwhelmed at the magnitude of what was going on.