Everyone,
It has been forever since I've posted. I have spent a lot of time thinking about this blog and what I want to do with it. I've determined that I want to keep it because it is a huge part of my past and who I've become. But, I'm also in a place in my life where I want to be more private about what I choose to share online, therefore this blog will be going private.
I truly don't even know how many people this blog reaches, but if you are interested in still following my blog then please let me know in a comment. My goal is to privatize this in one week, so think about it and let me know by Wednesday, November 18, 2015.
Thank you for your loyalty. Thank you for your encouragement and support. I hope this blog has been a place of healing and perspective. That was my intention from the beginning. This truly has been a journey, and the journey is getting so much better day-by-day, which is why I'm becoming more protective of what I share.
Sincerely,
Me
Wednesday, November 11, 2015
Wednesday, May 13, 2015
Perspective
It's been almost a year since I lasted posted. Time goes by so fast. To let you know what I've been doing, I recently graduated from Utah Valley University, as in May 1, 2015. And I've just accepted an English-teaching position for the 2016-2017 school year as an 8th grade English teacher, and I'm really excited about it. It's crazy because I've been working so hard to complete my Bachelor's degree that I haven't really done anything else. I've kept to myself because I've been so absorbed in academic pursuits that everything else just took a backseat. And also I've spent a lot of time considering what I want this blog to be.
I'm in a very different place in my journey as a birth-mother than I've ever been before. I've been an activist for adoption awareness in my own way, but I feel like my vision and perspective have shifted. When I first found out I was pregnant and I took a hard look at my life I realized that I had wasted so much time floundering about and wasting my time on unimportant pursuits. And as a result there was no way that I could provide for the child I was going to bring into this world. And that realization came about over the course of my entire pregnancy with Baby Boy. The day that I finally came to terms with the fact that I would be selfish if I chose to parent him knowing that I had no way to provide for either us was the day that I promised myself that I would create a future so that when I did become pregnant again I could provide for that child. And that's been my focus. And through all of that I have a better idea of who I am and I know what I want for my future, and it's happening for me.
This blog has been such a huge emotional outlet for me. I love the adoption community and I always will because it's within this community that I found my voice. For the first time in my life I realized that it was okay to say what I want to say and share my experience. I will always treasure that and all of you who have supported me and been my friend. And I'm going to continue to share my voice through this blog.
Something has been on my mind the last month, since about mid-April. It's probably silly but I also can't shake it so I'm going to talk about it here. It's Birth-mother's Day. Why do we need a separate day? Truly, why? Did you know that the founder of Mother's Day wasn't ever a mother? It's true. Her name was Anna Jarvis and she loved her mother so much that she wanted to commemorate that love by inspiring a national holiday to commemorate the love for all mothers, and to ceaselessly show her own devotion to her mother, endlessly.
Commemorate, that's a good word. It means to honor, memorialize, and celebrate. When I think of the word memorialize, I think of paying tribute to someone as a way of honoring them. I wonder if that's what Anna meant when she inspired this national holiday. In 1914 Mother's Day became an official holiday. Anna Jarvis later became disappointed in the commercialization of Mother's Day. For her, the idea for a day honoring mother's was born out of the recognition that children did not honor their parents, and that all that a woman does goes unnoticed and unrecognized. Her mother served the family, her husband, and the community with selfless service and was never recognized or appreciated for it. As a young child Anna swore that one day all women would have the opportunity to be recognized for the selfless acts they do for the benefit of others.
Now I recognize that Birth-mother's Day was born out of a need to create awareness, to educate the broader community, and to honor and remember. All of that is very important and I acknowledge this. But I'm concerned that it is beginning to become too commercialized. Anna's drive to advocate for a day for mother's was born from a prayer her mother gave; a very sacred experience. My experience to place Baby Boy for adoption was also born from a sacred experience. It's sacred, in both cases, and many more. To commercialize on the sacred is wrong. If it's for awareness sake, then yes that's important.
But more important is that a woman who was never a mother inspired a day for mothers. And now this day has become a day of stress and self-comparing to other women who seem to do "it" (mothering) better than you/me. I don't think there needs to be a designation because we are all mothers whether you are an adoptive mother, birth-mother, hopeful mother, whatever. One woman should not have one way designated for her because of the legal type of mother she is. We have all sacrificed something great for the well-being of another, and in that light we are all incredible mothers. To the women out there struggling with infertility, I'm sure mother's day means something very different to you. And that's my point. The day shouldn't be something that sets a person apart or that puts them in a different bracket than someone else, and that's exactly what Birth-mother's Day does. We need to stop comparing. I am an Other Mother, that doesn't make me less of a mother than a woman who parents her child because I sacrificed and did the best for him that I knew how given my circumstances. And for women who are waiting on the results of fertility treatments, or for women who are waiting for a placement to finalize, you are also mothers.
I hope my message is coming across clearly. From the perspective of a feminist, which I consider myself to be, the last thing we need is the compartmentalization of women into categories for the sake of commercialization. Mother "A" gets the traditional flowers and chocolate because she's a mother-mother, meaning she didn't place for adoption, whereas Mother "B" needs a special trinket from a specialized online store that specializes in gifts for birth-mothers because she's an "Other mother", and for women who aren't mothers, who don't have a child to prove their maternal instinct, well...
Do you get what I'm saying? Mother's Day shouldn't be about commercialization, and why have 2 types of mother's day for the different types of mothers, when a mother is a mother whether or not she's had a child yet, or adopted a child yet. Distinctions are made legally, and I can't resolve it within myself that within this adoption community that I love that distinctions are being made among powerful women, important women, life-altering and beautiful women. This is just my perspective and so I'm not saying it is the only perspective. But not everyone gets recognized on Birth-mothers Day or Mother's Day because the world fits us in a mold, or they don't know about the Saturday before Mother's Day and it's significance to birth-mothers. And I've seen birth-mothers feel "less-than" because they aren't acknowledged and that's why we need to be careful. Our self-worth and importance is not attached to a day that is commercialized. We are powerful because of the difficult decisions we make.
I'm in a very different place in my journey as a birth-mother than I've ever been before. I've been an activist for adoption awareness in my own way, but I feel like my vision and perspective have shifted. When I first found out I was pregnant and I took a hard look at my life I realized that I had wasted so much time floundering about and wasting my time on unimportant pursuits. And as a result there was no way that I could provide for the child I was going to bring into this world. And that realization came about over the course of my entire pregnancy with Baby Boy. The day that I finally came to terms with the fact that I would be selfish if I chose to parent him knowing that I had no way to provide for either us was the day that I promised myself that I would create a future so that when I did become pregnant again I could provide for that child. And that's been my focus. And through all of that I have a better idea of who I am and I know what I want for my future, and it's happening for me.
This blog has been such a huge emotional outlet for me. I love the adoption community and I always will because it's within this community that I found my voice. For the first time in my life I realized that it was okay to say what I want to say and share my experience. I will always treasure that and all of you who have supported me and been my friend. And I'm going to continue to share my voice through this blog.
Something has been on my mind the last month, since about mid-April. It's probably silly but I also can't shake it so I'm going to talk about it here. It's Birth-mother's Day. Why do we need a separate day? Truly, why? Did you know that the founder of Mother's Day wasn't ever a mother? It's true. Her name was Anna Jarvis and she loved her mother so much that she wanted to commemorate that love by inspiring a national holiday to commemorate the love for all mothers, and to ceaselessly show her own devotion to her mother, endlessly.
Commemorate, that's a good word. It means to honor, memorialize, and celebrate. When I think of the word memorialize, I think of paying tribute to someone as a way of honoring them. I wonder if that's what Anna meant when she inspired this national holiday. In 1914 Mother's Day became an official holiday. Anna Jarvis later became disappointed in the commercialization of Mother's Day. For her, the idea for a day honoring mother's was born out of the recognition that children did not honor their parents, and that all that a woman does goes unnoticed and unrecognized. Her mother served the family, her husband, and the community with selfless service and was never recognized or appreciated for it. As a young child Anna swore that one day all women would have the opportunity to be recognized for the selfless acts they do for the benefit of others.
Now I recognize that Birth-mother's Day was born out of a need to create awareness, to educate the broader community, and to honor and remember. All of that is very important and I acknowledge this. But I'm concerned that it is beginning to become too commercialized. Anna's drive to advocate for a day for mother's was born from a prayer her mother gave; a very sacred experience. My experience to place Baby Boy for adoption was also born from a sacred experience. It's sacred, in both cases, and many more. To commercialize on the sacred is wrong. If it's for awareness sake, then yes that's important.
But more important is that a woman who was never a mother inspired a day for mothers. And now this day has become a day of stress and self-comparing to other women who seem to do "it" (mothering) better than you/me. I don't think there needs to be a designation because we are all mothers whether you are an adoptive mother, birth-mother, hopeful mother, whatever. One woman should not have one way designated for her because of the legal type of mother she is. We have all sacrificed something great for the well-being of another, and in that light we are all incredible mothers. To the women out there struggling with infertility, I'm sure mother's day means something very different to you. And that's my point. The day shouldn't be something that sets a person apart or that puts them in a different bracket than someone else, and that's exactly what Birth-mother's Day does. We need to stop comparing. I am an Other Mother, that doesn't make me less of a mother than a woman who parents her child because I sacrificed and did the best for him that I knew how given my circumstances. And for women who are waiting on the results of fertility treatments, or for women who are waiting for a placement to finalize, you are also mothers.
I hope my message is coming across clearly. From the perspective of a feminist, which I consider myself to be, the last thing we need is the compartmentalization of women into categories for the sake of commercialization. Mother "A" gets the traditional flowers and chocolate because she's a mother-mother, meaning she didn't place for adoption, whereas Mother "B" needs a special trinket from a specialized online store that specializes in gifts for birth-mothers because she's an "Other mother", and for women who aren't mothers, who don't have a child to prove their maternal instinct, well...
Do you get what I'm saying? Mother's Day shouldn't be about commercialization, and why have 2 types of mother's day for the different types of mothers, when a mother is a mother whether or not she's had a child yet, or adopted a child yet. Distinctions are made legally, and I can't resolve it within myself that within this adoption community that I love that distinctions are being made among powerful women, important women, life-altering and beautiful women. This is just my perspective and so I'm not saying it is the only perspective. But not everyone gets recognized on Birth-mothers Day or Mother's Day because the world fits us in a mold, or they don't know about the Saturday before Mother's Day and it's significance to birth-mothers. And I've seen birth-mothers feel "less-than" because they aren't acknowledged and that's why we need to be careful. Our self-worth and importance is not attached to a day that is commercialized. We are powerful because of the difficult decisions we make.
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