All members and their friends and relatives are invited to our Summer Celebration Barbecue on Saturday June 30, 2001 from Noon to 10pm in Congers, NY (1/2 hour north of the George Washington Bridge, and 5 minutes from the Tappan Zee Bridge)  We will provide hotdogs, hamburgers, soda and chips.  Pot Luck Dishes are welcome.  This lakefront property is also the location of our healing weekends.  Lots of lawn, lakeside dock, swans and geese and a screened in porch.  A tranquil setting for a great day.  Enjoy a day away from the city and enjoy, Rain or Shine!  Please feel welcome to share this day with us..
(For non-members unaccompanied by members a suggested contribution is $5 per person)

The 12th March on Washington for Civil Rights in Adoption

All members and their friends and relatives are invited to our 15th Annual Outing on Saturday September 1, 2001 from Noon to 10pm in Congers, NY (1/2 hour north of the George Washington Bridge, and 5 minutes from the Tappan Zee Bridge)  We will provide hotdogs, hamburgers, soda and chips.  Pot Luck Dishes are welcome.  This lakefront property is also the location of our healing weekends.  Lots of lawn, lakeside dock, swans and geese and a screened in porch.  A tranquil setting for a great day.  Enjoy a day away from the city and enjoy, Rain or Shine!  Please feel welcome to share this day with us..
(For non-members unaccompanied by members a suggested contribution is $5 per person)

 Social Workers of Shame
 

Social workers who cared, gave the best that they had Soft voices, caring hands, gave hope to the sad For those workers we pray, have our love and praise They are the Lord's messengers, blessed be all their days Sadly there were some, who had hate in their heart Not of the same mold, they pulled families apart They would say they tried - gave us their best makes one wonder, what their worst would have been? Working in teams, to help mothers in stress They came, they saw - and then: Pulled families apart, scattered to the wind None intervened, made them atone for their sins "For their own good", was their valiant claim This is their legacy, "social workers of shame" Please help me, cried many mothers in need "We will", they answered, and responded with speed The help that they offered - lies witness to bare For members of families, they had little care They drafted up records, and sealed them from sight and took the small children like theives in the night Kept them from finding family or kin When questioned, avoided - and lied to hide sins

But there is a bond - that is stronger than theirs A bloodline of strength, and ties that do bind And there is no worker that can win in the end Because angels step in -- as only angels can The families unite, and mend broken dreams The blood in their veins, the genetics of genes like magnets that pull, and firmly unite form new bonds of love, bonds that hold tight And who pays for the sins that caused such despair? Who demands an accounting? Is there no-one who cares? Have no fear, it will come, for that is God's way They will pay for each crime on that final day They will hear their sins read, one by one, from that book have no where to hide - can't avoid the Lord's look And when its all over, and life's day is done payment for sins, is all they have won For workers who cared, and had hearts of true gold who made every effort to help families unfold God will look upon them with grace and a smile tell them heaven is theirs..for helping a child So be careful my friend when you enter a home Make sure your heart is pure, and agenda unscared For the Lord sees it all, and knows of your plan and the road that you travel, you will travel again

Written for my friend Sherry and those whose lives were touched, by
"Social Workers of Shame"..........Joan 1999

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Mother to Daughter

Do you know that you were a dead child until you were thirty-three? And who I was before you went into hiding on the day you were born.

 It was as though I had to die to give you life. But then you had to die in order for me to go on and create a life for myself. It was a counterfeit life. It was a life that was prescribed for me by a system that wanted us both to be cured of the most stinking crime of illegitimacy. So I handed you over. At least someone else found a meaning in their own lives as a result. But you and I became the living dead.

The medicine never worked for me. I dragged around the carcass of surrendered child, the empty cocoon of my heart from which you flew. Years of joyless living pecked and nibbled at my heart. I became a child myself - a child with no voice. The system rendered me mute. Worse than that they stole my decision making ability. Years passed in which I gave away my power and voice. Always I felt that I was unworthy, incapable of speaking for myself. Others wove themselves into my life -selfish others, unkind others. And stupidly my voice could not cry out against their injustices. -Underneath was the overwhelming sense of not being able to decide.

 The first decision I ever made on the brink of adulthood was to bear you and keep you. Plans were made. We would flee you and I. Of course youth always thinks things will magically work out. What else can it think? (Now I know myself better.  Now I know that I have a hidden strength that doesn't give up until things do work out).  But we were intercepted, scorned. They said it was a foolish decision, an impossible dream. They made it clear that it was a decision I was incapable of making because of my age, my moral depravity, my lack of resources. Still, I held out for a few weeks. You had to live with a second mom, a fostered mom.

 I could have my reputation back, they said, if I would tear you from my mind and heart. Of course reputation, it seemed, was the almighty greatest reason on earth to go on living. They were wrong. Going back to college was part of their cure. I felt alienated -from other students, and for myself. I tried on different things to make myself forget. Forgetting was the main task they gave me. It too was impossible. How do you forget that you are a mother? How do you forget that someone else is raising your child because you are declared unworthy and unable? Lots of drugs won't silence the screaming pain. Lots of lovers can't take away the hole in the soul that continuously seeps like a wound that won't scab. You never left me. A lost lover can be replaced; a child can never be replaced.

I could not meditate you away. I could not sleep you away. Only the faint hopes of my seeing, you again kept me from stealing my own life. They wanted me to kill you off like some character in a play. In all their counsel no one ever told me how to grieve a child that isn't really dead. The counseling then was with one goal in mind -getting the papers signed.

 Then, with every new baby, hope of healing was again quenched ~ Maybe I never gave any of them all could have had of my heart. Somehow, missing you, skipping the bonding that should happen as an infant changes to a child, child too adult made me hold something back. Somehow I think I never let the depth of bonding happen with any of the others. Though I loved them intensely, jealously, I never felt I could draw them close. In fact, I have never wanted to draw anyone close. It has seemed some kind of a sentence that I have had to serve out. Have I thought myself unworthy of love? Maybe a silent fear of losing them too, accompanied me on that journey.

 Who have I been? I have been someone deemed beneath the rest of the world. I was declared not good enough. Not good enough to love and nurture my own child. Not good enough to make decisions that would affect our lives forever. Not moral enough or worthy of having anything to do with you. Somehow my giving you life was judged a weakness of character, a mental flaw. I was inferior and would be a bad influence on you. Strangers could do a better job. It seemed unnatural to me. But who was I to say?

So, I have lived my life feeling just beneath everyone else. Because of that I have never asserted myself even when I should have. After all, if wanting you in my life was first selfish and then illegal, how could I rightly judge any of my choices. Surely others would have to go on telling me what to do. Yet somewhere deep inside a strength fought to escape. I did begin to make decisions that slowly cracked the mold that kept me locked in. Somewhere I stopped sitting down when my worth or ability was challenged. I began to rise up against those false interpretations and challenge them back. Returning to student status was a beginning. The real breakthrough was when I decided to look for you. Still, several years passed before I took an active step toward that. In the meantime, many of the entanglements of my life cried out for attention. Painfully I began to deal with them. The dead child was coming to life. She was urging me to run against the wind.

 Joy eventually began to get into my soul. New love came and treated me kindly. He joined my quest, scanning the horizon for any hint of you. " Are you out there?" I called again and again, posting my plea for all to see. It was time to be done with the shame. Let everyone know finally that maternal love is - a stronger force than reputation or social rules or legal systems. Go ahead and wear the scarlet letter, no one really notices it these days anyway.

Then there you were, on the other end of the phone line. Such a weird way to say hello. It was not a moment of counting toes, suckling, showering a fuzzy forehead with kisses. No one was standing there sharing the moment. There were no showers or gifts. None the less, it was still "Welcome at last." It was a pregnancy of thirty-three years. In that moment I was again nineteen and you were the newly born. The long dead had sprung to life.

 I showed off your pictures like a new mother showing off the newborn. I reveled in the first time of hearing your voice, your laughter as if it were the first time you had ever laughed in your life. It seemed like my first time.

 There is nothing that can heal the wound of a mother robbed of her child except the child itself. Excuse me for having to put you back in the nursery momentarily. I am not forgetting to affirm the wonderful adult that you have become. But that first feeling that the others called selfishly has returned and it is not selfish. It is primal; it is essential to survival. And now I am a survivor. I have laughed at prejudice and seen it fade into the landscape of another era. I have cast off the depression that made me its companion by keeping me as its hostage. We can both grow up now. You have found the other mother that you could never quite remember though you felt something of me that was left with you. I have found the daughter that I could never quite forget though I tried to follow the prescription.

 Who dares say that all that happens, even unjustly, is not part of a bigger plan? Though the detour was long and treacherous, the joy of the arrival has made the journey fade away like the pain of labor. We have this moment and the rest of our lives to take a new journey -this time together, not in shadows or dreams, but in the bright light of day.

 Janet McDonald, (c) 2001

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