I was checking articles, blogs and links about adoption this morning, trying to plan out next week’s topic list for the bp/fp blog. I clicked on one, entitled “More Than Mommy Blogs,” and proceeded to choke on my coffee. And then I just sat there and pondered things for a bit. I was going to write a brief aside. But things started getting jumbled and I just needed to write without worrying about the length of my sidebar.
I was mentioned, after a paragraph about The League of Maternal Justice (whom you should support, by the way) in the Toledo Free Press (as in, Toledo, Ohio). A brief paragraph at best, simply talking about the fact that I write the bp/fp blog, that I’m a birth mother (though, bless this writer, she never uses the term birth mother!) and that I’m from Ohio. She uses my whole name, which is never an issue because I’m not ashamed of either my role as a first parent or anything I’ve written (sans some bad middle school poetry).
Three things hit me as I pondered the paragraph:
1) I was just mentioned in a post about Mommy blogging. My mommyblog was not mentioned. The adoption blog was. That feels nice to me.
2) The topic of adoption was mentioned in a mainstream format without judgment or malice. People are going to click through that normally wouldn’t give two thoughts about the plight of generations of birth parents.
3) My sister-in-law lives in Toledo.
Regarding the last one, I’m not really concerned about it. First of all, she not only knows about the Munchkin but asks about her frequently. She loves the hilarious stories about Munchkin-antics. (Who wouldn’t?) Secondly, she’s quite busy and doesn’t have much time for reading. As I said, I’m not concerned about it. It was just a fact: I was just covered in an online paper in a city where a relative of mine lives. This continues to happen in my life. And I think I’m glad. It forces me to be honest, to live my life openly.
It’s really, really easy for birth parents to hide behind the secret veil of birth parenthood. It’s not a topic most people think to broach when you’re discussing children. “Oh, so you have two kids here. Have you placed any for adoption that we should know about?” No, it’s just not brought up unless the first parent brings it up. Considering our adoption is fully open, I can’t hide it well. If you come to my house, my living room features pictures not only of the Little Man but of the Munchkin, her brother, her Mom (and random other family members).
If things were different… for example, if this was ten to twenty years ago or if our adoption wasn’t fully open or any number of different variations, it would be incredibly easy for me to hide under the cloak of invisible birth parenthood. It would be. While I seem open and willing to discuss the topics concerning first parents in today’s adoptions, it’s only because I don’t have a choice with the logistics of our relationship. If things weren’t what they were and I didn’t have pictures of us together to prove that we had a bond… would I be so outspoken? Probably not. My anxiety would get in the way, as it does sometimes even now, and tell me that I wasn’t worth the wasted breath. That no one cared about my emotional journey. No one cared about birth parents.
It’s kind of like the whole BlogHerAds over there on the left hand side. Quite a few of my specifically adoption related posts have been linked since I added this blog. More than I thought they would pick up. I thought they’d grab each week’s less adoption related post. (Though they didn’t grab the Pro-Life bumper sticker one which bummed me out, choosing a much more tame topic.) I’ve had a lot of click through’s on posts that the normal mommyblogging set really doesn’t read on a day-to-day basis. It’s unnerving, really, which was some of the cause behind the Naked Blogging post. Here are all of these moms, some of whom are equally awesome bloggers, reading things that could potentially place me in the line of judgment.
Surprisingly, I haven’t had one off-color comment on any of those posts. True, they could be so appalled that a birth mother was linked on their blog. But I like to think it’s because I’ve gained some respect from other motherly types.
Or maybe I just ramble so much that no one makes it through an entire post. Now that is a possibility.