I read your post last week and clearly it had an effect.
This weekend I did a "search and replace" in a document I am writing about the searching for my family.
I pushed Control, F - Replace "mother with adoptive mother" and Replace "birth mother with mother". I got heart palpitations doing it, it felt terrifying and rebellious. Then I thought, this is how we change perspectives, within and outside of us. By reinforcing the message, by telling the truth. It felt as ruthless an action as my AM was herself in her life. It required stripping away another layer of societal conditioning for me to be able to do it. The changes will stay.
Thank you for this Tony. My (also adopted) brother loves movies etc with those kinds of plots. Not sure if he's realised why! I had to write my life story as part of a counselling course I did a few years ago. It was very interesting to write it from my own fresh perspective without any of the usual polite adoption myths veiling it, and to begin simply with the facts of my mother's pregnancy.
Thank you for sharing an extended version of your thoughts here, it takes such courage to express them, to even learn how to see through that neutral lens.
When I read this line,
"Relinquishment is almost always a desperate response to a crisis. Severance is drastic."
it made me think of the crisis that an awakened sexuality became for so many young women in that era.
Before reading your post, I had just read a review of the French writer Annie Ernaux's (expert of the neutral form) short memoir 'Happening', about her own confrontation with an unwanted pregnancy in the 1960's, that has recently been translated into English and made into an award winning film. L'Evenement feels like an intense thriller (just from seeing the trailer), the fear inherent in the circumstance is palpable. Although she doesn't choose adoption, it's the same crisis, the situation of the unsupported, abandoned woman with a ticking clock inside her. Terrifying.
And those who saw a scared pregnant woman as an opportunity, equally terrifying.
Thank you for your clear analysis and compassionate voice
This is so good, Tony. I think Substack is the new blogosphere! You're quickly coming to be a very important voice here.
I read your post last week and clearly it had an effect.
This weekend I did a "search and replace" in a document I am writing about the searching for my family.
I pushed Control, F - Replace "mother with adoptive mother" and Replace "birth mother with mother". I got heart palpitations doing it, it felt terrifying and rebellious. Then I thought, this is how we change perspectives, within and outside of us. By reinforcing the message, by telling the truth. It felt as ruthless an action as my AM was herself in her life. It required stripping away another layer of societal conditioning for me to be able to do it. The changes will stay.
Thank you for this Tony. My (also adopted) brother loves movies etc with those kinds of plots. Not sure if he's realised why! I had to write my life story as part of a counselling course I did a few years ago. It was very interesting to write it from my own fresh perspective without any of the usual polite adoption myths veiling it, and to begin simply with the facts of my mother's pregnancy.
Thank you for sharing an extended version of your thoughts here, it takes such courage to express them, to even learn how to see through that neutral lens.
When I read this line,
"Relinquishment is almost always a desperate response to a crisis. Severance is drastic."
it made me think of the crisis that an awakened sexuality became for so many young women in that era.
Before reading your post, I had just read a review of the French writer Annie Ernaux's (expert of the neutral form) short memoir 'Happening', about her own confrontation with an unwanted pregnancy in the 1960's, that has recently been translated into English and made into an award winning film. L'Evenement feels like an intense thriller (just from seeing the trailer), the fear inherent in the circumstance is palpable. Although she doesn't choose adoption, it's the same crisis, the situation of the unsupported, abandoned woman with a ticking clock inside her. Terrifying.
And those who saw a scared pregnant woman as an opportunity, equally terrifying.