Diving Back In

I've gotten away from my adoption related reading lately.  I ordered a bunch of books, got them, and then my reunion came crashing to a halt back in December.  I put the books away in the back of my closet, and put them out of my mind.  Lately I've found some spare time and things are going a lot better.  I think I'm ready to try another book.  I loved Lost and Found by Betty J. Lifton, so I decided to give Journey of an Adopted Self a shot.  So far I'm loving it!

I think that reading books about adoption while in the right frame of mind is a great exercise.  For me, reading Lost and Found was like a light bulb going off.  All of these complex things that I felt were right there in black and white text published in a book!  I saw my history written for me in a way that I could understand and now verbalize.  And there were things in that book that I didn't identify with either.  No two adoptees are the same though so that made a lot of sense to me too.

Reading that book helped me so much.  It was the right time for me to read it though.  I was going through my reunion and saw how things could end badly after my first mother pulled back.  The fantasy was gone and I was ready to accept the truth, rather than this idea I had built in my head about what adoption is.  I was ready to hear some of the cons.  I'd been working towards that for a while and this book was the final push to make my views more realistic.

When my reunion with my first father was going well, I read those books because it was important for me to understand what was happening in my life.  I'd read that it was nearly impossible to find a good councilor versed in adoption issues.  So it was a way to see from an outside some of the things that were going on in my head.  It helped me so much and it's hard to put into words what it felt like to realize that I was normal.  Well, normal for an adoptee ;-)

Once things fell apart, I couldn't deal with the adoption stuff anymore.  I was still posting here, but it was really hard.  I really struggled back in December.  I was depressed, started battling an eating disorder, and really struggled with the point of it all.  It was a dark time for me.  I had to put everything aside and try to move on with my life.  It wasn't easy.  In January, I made a vow to myself to get better and I started working hard at it.  I stood up for myself with my first father and decided that I was going to take control of my own life.

I made some key decisions and slowly started to pull myself out of the ditch I had found myself in.  It was one of the hardest things I've done in a while, but I got through it.  I finally feel like the bulk of that drama is behind me and I'm ready to move forward.  I'm so much happier these days and I love feeling this way.  I've gained nearly five pounds, which is huge for me.  Things aren't perfect, but they never will be.

Perhaps before I was a bit too obsessive over all this stuff.  Now, I'm at a place where my adoption stuff fits into my life as it should.  It's a major part of my life.  There's no getting away from that.  Just like being a woman is a huge part of my life, or being an engineer.  Adoption will always be a part of who I am.  I can't change that.  But I can embrace it.  That being said, I don't want it to be my whole life.  I think I'm starting to find a good balance for everything.  So I'm going to read this book and see what happens.  I'm liking it so far and I hope to have a review up soon.

Love this Video - "Beautiful"

This comes from the new show SM.ASH, which I will not be watching.  But I will be keeping my eyes out on YouTube because I think that a lot of good music will come out of this show...  Like this song:

Writer's Block

You know how some days you sit down to write a blog post and nothing comes out?  Yup, having one of those days.

So you get this:

Switched At Birth: The Dating Your Father Complex (not really)

I'm a fan of ABC Family's Switched at Birth.  Although I wasn't "switched at birth", I do find some of the themes to be similar.  I watched last night's episode "Self-Portrait With a Bandaged Ear" and was again struck at how similar some of the themes are.  (Note: I'm about to talk about a few minor plot points).

Basically, you have two girls who are switched at birth, and figure it out when they are 16.  Major twist is that one of the girls is deaf.  So you basically have all these issues that the show gets to explore about not only being switched at birth but also the differences between the deaf and hearing worlds.  Back to the switch thing.  One girl ends up with this super rich family (the father was a major league baseball player) while the other girl ends up with a single mom in a bad area of town.  Eventually, the other father comes back and had the opportunity to get to know his biological daughter.

So you have Bay and Angelo getting to know one another.  Which is awkward.  So in this episode, Bay meets Angelo at a coffee shop where the two of them are going to get to know each other.  This is really their first time hanging out together just the two of them because all other "visits" have had a chaperon.  So it's strange.  And neither of them know what to say.  And he orders her a coffee not realizing that she's 16 and not really allowed to drink it.  Whoops!  And then Bay says the most amazing thing.  She tells him that it's so strange because it's like a cross between an interview and a date.  Only he's her father.

She hit the nail on the head.  Exactly what I felt like getting to know my first father.  There's a lot of qualities that are similar to dating.  Only it's not a date because he's your father.  So then it feels more like an interview.  But not really.  There really isn't any situation that's similar.  So weird and awkward.  And because it's weird and awkward, you know that something doesn't feel right.  Or at least I knew something didn't feel right.  And that just made it worse.  Don't get me wrong, it was amazing getting to know my first father.  But different and unexpected at the same time.  Twilight zone different.

Anyway, that small line stuck with me for the rest of the show.  Because it summed up so perfectly what I was feeling nearly a year ago when I met my first father for the first time.  And it really made me think about why that show is on television.  Because honestly?  It's like something that no other situation compares to.  There isn't anything else like it.  This feeling of getting to know someone you are biologically related to for the first time not as a child but as an adult (or teen in this case).  It's not normal and people are drawn to the story line.  Or at least that's what I think anyway.

I was talking to Rudy about things last night.  He compared what I was going through to a break up.  And in some cases, he's right.  But at the same time, when you break up with someone, there's a small glimmer of hope that maybe there's someone else out there.  You can meet another person eventually.  You might not think that right away, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel.  My first father can never be replaced.  There is only one person out there who contributed that part of my DNA.  I can't search again and find someone else.  That's it.  He's it.  So if things are really done, then that's it.  It's painful, but the truth.

And because it's January 18th, go check out Amanda's blog post STOP SOPA/PIPA!

Vacation Recap

I need a vacation from my vacation!  I got a lot accomplished, but not nearly enough.  I did however watch lots of TV.  While a part of me thinks "What a waste of a week" another part of me is happy I got to relax.  I saw lots of friends, loads of family, and had a great time overall.  I even took a trip to Connecticut to see Rudy which is a coin toss.  This time it was a fantastic visit, even though the air mattress I was sleeping on got a hole in it so I woke up in the middle of my last night on the floor.  Oh well!

Rudy and I made a game time decision and decided not to go to Times Square.  Instead, we sat around watching TV and movies all day in our PJs.  I can now say I've seen three of the four Die Hard movies (Live Free or Die Hard is still on my list).  Thanks to a new Netflix account I now have a way of slowly getting through my list of movies.  We also discovered Storage Wars.  It's pretty epic.  Though I do think it would be weird to go through someone else's stuff like that after buying a storage locker.  I can't get over it.  If you have something of major value in your storage locker and you were falling behind in your payments, why wouldn't you sell something to come up with the money to pay for it?  I've only seen a few episodes but one locker contained items estimated at $90,000.  That's a lot of money!

My friends and I had some great times too.  We went out a few times and hung out like we used to before we all had jobs.  What a nice life we all had back then!  One of my friends got great news this break too.  She not only got the job she applied for (how exciting!) but her boyfriend passed a major test and is able to move forward with his career.  So it was a good vacation for her.  My other friend started a new job after two years of searching.  While it's hard to be the new girl, she's adjusting well and finally doing what she went to school for.  So it was fantastic to see her and hear all about it.

We had a bunch of family parties this break too.  I saw the majority of my cousins (which is no small task as I have 27 of them...), aunts, uncles, and grandparents.  Next weekend I have another family party as three of my cousins will be playing in the same high school hockey game (on different teams no less!).  So there's been loads of extended family time.  Which is fun.  I'm sure after next weekend though I'll need a break!

Back to work and back to normal life I guess.  Did everyone have a great holiday season?

The B Word

Scarlet B

When I started to "get in touch" with my adoptee issues, it dawned on me that insults I'd been hearing my whole life (never aimed at me) actually were a slur against me and others who were not born to married parents.  I never considered myself to be illegitimate or a bastard because I never really took the time to think about what those words meant.  I never took the time to realize that those words are not just insults that are thrown around, they imply things about the person, mainly, that their parents were not married and that's a bad thing.  While I can understand that our society thinks all people should be married before having children, our world is not like that today.  Children are born out of wedlock.  Men marry men, women marry women.  There are single mothers, and single fathers.  It happens.  It's something that I learned in school.  There are many ways to have a family and not all families look alike.  So if that's the message we are trying to teach, then why does society hold on to insults like "bastard"?

I've become more aware of this slur ever since I started to hear other adoptees claim the world as their own.  It wasn't until then that I really started to think about how it applied to me and how before I could "take it back" and claim it as my own, I needed to understand what it meant and why I even had the right to claim it.  I started hearing it everywhere.  My family has used it.  My friends have used it.  Rudy even used it.  And it's on TV as one of the worst insults you can hurl at people.  It keeps cropping up.

I've always tried to be careful about what words I use.  Words can hurt.  And you never know who around you could be offended.  I have a cousin who was a bit behind in development when he was a baby.  He's fine now, all caught up, but there was a time when we weren't sure if was a bigger problem.  All of a sudden, "retard" and "retarded" as slurs started to jump out at me.  I started calling my friends on it and asked them not to use that language.  They didn’t get it (they were mostly boys).  I finally flipped out on them after one trying day and told them that my cousins could possibly be "retarded" and it was disrespectful to him, to my family, and therefore to me to make light of the challenges he might face.  They were surprised because they didn't think anyone around them had a connection.  Yet I did.  Rudy did.

I've started calling people out on the word "bastard".  When I hear that word used as a slur, I just say "ouch".  If it's someone that knows about my adoption connection, they immediately apologize because they, like me a year ago, don't understand what the word means and what it implies.  It's just something they picked up from society like "jerk" and "asshole".  If they don't know about my adoption connection, I simply state that my parents were not married when I was born, so therefore I could be considered a bastard and that language is offensive to me.  I haven't run into anyone who hasn’t apologized yet.  I'm sure that day will come though because there are some nasty people out there.

My point is, words can hurt.  I'm not perfect.  I slip up from time to time.  I say things that come out wrong, I do and say things that hurt others, and it's not something that I'm proud of.  I'm working on it.  I consider myself in general to be a work in progress.  My progress today is to educate that words matter.  So think twice please before you use the B word.  You never know who's standing behind you...

Oh and...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOMMY!!!

I will not blog about this...

My messed up attempt
at an apple...

I will not blog about this... I will not blog about this... I will not blog about this...

I will not blog about a certain person who passed away last week....

I will not blog about possibly the world's most famous adoptee at the moment...

I will not blog about the idiocy of some of the statements about if he could have been aborted...

I will not blog about the debate if we would have iProducts if he hadn't been adopted...

I will not blog about a book and possibly a movie coming out about his life and how I highly doubt either will show adoption issues realistically...

I will not blog about his behavior and how sometimes it was classic adoptee behavior...

I will not blog about nature vs. nurture and how it shaped him...

I will not blog about this... I will not blog about this... I will not blog about this...

(I wonder if I type it enough times it will work and I won't blog about it???  Or maybe I'll just give myself credit that I waited a week!)

Videos

My first father has started sending me videos of himself. The story is located here: http://insertbadmovietitlehere.wordpress.com/2011/08/29/videos/

Old Movies

I've been watching a lot of movies lately.  My reason?  I just got a new TV for my bedroom and I don't have it hooked up to cable yet!  So it's DVDs or bust.  I have a very interesting collection of DVDs so I'm sure my family is scratching their heads as they walk by.

First movie this week: Singin' In the Rain.  I love this one.  It's just a classic.  The singing, the dancing, the corny plot...  Plus it's pretty funny at the same time.  I can't decide what my favorite song is.  I think I love "Good Mornin'" the best.  Funny story about that scene.  Debbie Reynolds wasn't a trained dancer.  Gene Kelley was so angry that she couldn't do the dance steps that he made her cry.  So that's some interesting trivia for you.  Oh, and Debbie Reynolds was actually dubbed.  She is a dubbed actress playing an actress dubbing someone else.  Go figure.

Next movie: Star Trek, you know the new one.  Something about this movie makes me love it every time.  That something may or may not have anything to do with the lead actor.  Just saying...  I love adventure movies so this one was a pretty fun one.  I was never really into Star Trek (I'm more of a Star Wars kind of girl) but it's pretty interesting.  Plus the main character looses his father on the day he was born, so I guess I feel like we are a bit connected in some way.

Final "movie": BBC version of Emma.  My mom sent me this one for Valentine's Day and I can't seem to get enough of it.  I'm a HUGE Jane Austen fan and I love everything about this time in England.  I always felt like a traitor before because I "come from" an Irish family.  Irish people aren't supposed to like anything about England.  They HATE England.  Well, turns out I'm part English.  It's a small part, but now I feel like I'm watching my peeps.  Go figure.

Up next: The whole first season of Glee (well, maybe not some of the episodes where Rachel is dealing with trying to find her mother), BBC version of Pride and Prejudice, all of the extended versions of Lord of the Rings, and a few other random movies thrown in here or there.

Hopefully by the time I finish my current list of movies to re-watch I'll have a new cable line in my room and I'll be able to actually watch TV from the comfort of my own bed.  My mother hates TV so we were never allowed to have it before, but I put my foot down when I had to move home and said that as a 23 year old I should be able to make some basic decisions, such as when to go to bed.  I'm not 12 anymore and I won't stay up half the night watching bad TV.  I feel like such a big girl now!

A Quote From Your Favorite Book

"No relationship is perfect, ever. There are always some ways you have to bend, to compromise, to give something up in order to gain something greater...The love we have for each other is bigger than these small differences. And that's the key. It's like a big pie chart, and the love in a relationship has to be the biggest piece. Love can make up for a lot."  ~Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)

I'm a huge fan of Sarah Dessen.  I've read all of her books because they are amazing.  I don't care if they are young adult, I still read them now because I love them so much and because the stories still speak to me.  Each book centers around a female lead who has one big problem.  She has a character flaw and is faced with a large problem.  Over the course of the story, she learns how to deal with her character flaw and with the support of a great cast of characters, is able to work through the problem.  Amazing.

This Lullaby is the first Sarah Dessen book I read.  It will always have a special place in my heart.  This quote is one of my absolute favorites.  It reminds me all the time that love is a two way street.  It isn't perfect.  There is a lot of bending, and compromise, and giving.  That's how life is.  You have to give to get.  And what you get when you give love is so much better than anything that you could ever get on your own...

All relationships take work.  For starters, the obvious romantic relationship takes a lot of work.  It's a struggle.  If it wasn't, it wouldn't be worth it.  When did I realize that I really and truly loved my boyfriend?  It was after a fight.  I remember sitting there thinking, if it was anyone else... I'd be long gone.  That got me thinking?  Why wasn't I gone?  What was keeping me around?  The realization that I would never go anywhere because I need him in my life was pretty epic.  I knew that the small differences meant nothing.  It really was a big pie chart.  The love was the biggest piece.  It took up almost the entire pie.  I'd get a stomach ache if I ate that piece of pie.  It's that big.

Other relationships come to mind while reflecting on this too.  I've been thinking a lot about NeverTooLate lately.  I miss her.  I miss her in my life.  When it comes to us, the love portion of the pie was smaller than the guilt and shame part of the pie.  Love wasn't enough to overshadow the guilt and shame.  Love can make up for a lot, but it takes both people to recognise this in order for it to be true.  The nice thing about this "Love Pie" is that it's easy for different parts to grow and other parts to shrink.  I think that maybe someday the guilt and shame pieces will get smaller.  Then we'll see.  Maybe we'll be able to see past the small differences that don't really matter.  Maybe.  And thank you NeverTooLate.  Now you have me sounding like Orphan Annie!

Television and Adoption

Now, I'm not a media studies major, nor do I have anything to do with media production, but the regular blogger that I am has noticed by watching television that the American public has a huge fascination for adoption.  I've seen in on nearly all of my favorite shows and I can't get over how many plot lines are used that have adoption in some form as the main focus.  What is it about adoption that makes it such a good plot line? 

Is it the drama of it all?  I don't think anyone could deny that adoption brings a lot of drama to the table.  I've said it before and I'll say it again, my life is like a movie with all the drama that comes from my adoption.  Seriously.  How can there not be drama when issues of identity, background, love, rejection, and pain all come into play?

Is it because adoption is painful and therefore fun to watch?  What I mean by this is that we like to watch other people's pain on television.  Look at the show Wipeout if you disagree.  We like to watch other people in pain because it distracts us from our own.  Pain is very real when it comes to adoption.

Is it because adoption is romanticised in the media?  I certainly think that there is a lot of what we "bitter" adoptees call "rainbow farting" on television.  These shows rarely show the painful side of adoption and make it seem like adoption is always the best option and that there is nearly always a happy ending.  Or the adoptee is portrayed as the murderer because adoptees are not understood and therefore must be crazy (though there are studies that show that adoptees are more likely to become murderers than non-adopted people - huh).  Adoption "saves" our favorite characters from infertility.  It's one of those stock story lines like cancer or betrayal.

At this point, I can see an adoption storyline coming from a mile away.  I've had to stop watching several of my favorite shows because they don't show the painful side of adoption, only the happy side.  There are two sides to every story, and only one is represented on television.  Why is it that you don't see a "birthmother" story on TV?  They use adoption to take in a new character, but they don't show the mother that gives the baby away and how she is handling things a few years down the line.  They don't show adoptees all grown up and wondering where they come from.  They don't show these things, only the adoptive parents' journey and how happy these TV families are to get another member.

Lately, I can't seem to find a show that isn't using an adoption story line.  It never used to be this bad before, or at least not that I remember.  On Castle, a murder victim was an adoptee and a suspect was her "birthmother".  On Army Wives, Joan and Roland learn they can't have another child and talk about adopting.  Joan doesn't want to because she doesn't feel she can love someone else's child the way she loves her own.  She gets over it (barf).  On Brothers and Sisters, Kevin and Scotty have to fight their daughter's brother for custody.  Plus, then the end up with a baby (long story) who's a donor baby.  On Parenthood, Julia and Joel decide to adopt.  On Grey's Anatomy, you can smell an adoption story line coming from a mile away.  Even The Voice had a contestant on that was clearly adopted.  They didn't show his face because they wanted the audience to be surprised and showed his white parents.  Clearly this guy was adopted with his afro.  I'm afraid to turn on my TV.

I think that for society to change it's views on adoption and for serious reform to take place, the media needs to step it up and start showing the whole story.  There's plenty of drama all around, I can promise you that!