Thank you all for your suggestions!

First off, I'd like to thank all of you that have taken the time to read my blog and for the suggestions that followed. All suggestions received thus far have all been identical!! You all have suggested that I write to the "Find My Family" show to inquire about search assistance; however, I was one step ahead of you all...LOL...I had already printed out the app from their web site.

So here's the thing about "Find My Family"...their application is geared mostly towards adoptees. Now, there are other questions about whom you would like them to search for: high school sweethearts, military personnel, long-lost relatives, but this questionnaire is basically geared towards adoptees. The questions are about where you were born, whether or not you have a copy of your original birth certificate, what info you have on your b/parents including any non-identifying information....sadly, not one question about finding a son or daughter lost to adoption.

Now, I am painfully aware that there's another side of the adoption rights nightmare and that is those women that choose to hide from their children but, frankly, I choose not to give them anything other than one small paragraph in which to acknowledge that they do exist. You see, I can not blog about something that I have no personal knowledge of and about something that I could never understand. With everything that I went through to give my son the gift of life (and it is a gift if you consider the alternative) I have never, EVER looked at him as something to be ashamed of. It wasn't HIS fault, now was it? He didn't asked to be conceived, he didn't even ask to be born....he didn't have a voice...I was his voice and I wanted him to live. These women, whom I just can not even begin to understand, act as if these children that they carried and delivered are some type of monster that should be kept in hiding....I find that unconscionable. All the pain (phyiscal, emotional and mental) that I endured to allow my son a chance at life was worth every moment that (I pray) he's been alive. I feel that these children (and again, I remind you that I am one) have a right to know, and have access to, their medical 'blueprint.' I also feel that those that adopted them should have some type of mandated pre-adoption training that they, like all students, should be required to "pass" before being enabled to raise these children. Again, there has not been a single day in the last 26 + years that I have not thought and wondered about my son. To be so ill at heart as to not wonder about the child that you fed, nourished and carried within you boggles my mind.

And, I ask you to ponder this question...if we, as first moms, are such terrible, evil, unloving creatures on the planet why, then, are adoption records sealed? Why do you want to keep us, as first parents, such a secret from our biological children? If we were these horrible creatures that forced you to 'rescue' our children, why hide? Why lie to them? Why not be open with these children from the beginning, hence lightening the strain of the Primal Wound in all of us??

Yes, you guessed it. I also believe that we, as first moms, should have some rights, too (of course I do, you say, because I am searching for my son).....but had anyone considered the circumstances of my son's being placed up for adoption? Did the judge that heard me sobbing on the witness stand say to himself, "hey, this young girl seems to be really upset about a decision that she's supposedly made, Perhaps I should ask her some more questions, perhaps I should ask her parents, both of whom are staring at hers with daggers coming out of their eyes, to leave the room and speak with this girl privately"...um, NO. Did the attorney (whom should be dis-barred if he's still alive for being part of something so terribly illegal) say to himself, or anyone else for that matter "this girl doesn't want her son taken away from her, this is morally wrong"...um, NO. But, in the eyes of most of the adoptive parents that have crossed my path on this search for my son, I am a cold, unfit woman that didn't 'want' my child and have no business even looking for a child that 'they' raised, that 'they' loved.....after all, if I had been a 'good mother' to my son then I wouldn't be looking for him, right? So, so, SO wrong. Our love for these children are the very reason they even exist for these people to raise. Had we made another decision after finding out we were pregnant would they have that child to raise?? Some have argued that what I have done (as a first mom) was not a gift. Not a gift?? Really??? Without my gift you'd have no child. But, I digress. Besides, my gift was for my son...not for anyone else. It was for him to have a chance....a chance at a better life than I had...unfortunately his chance just wasn't allowed to be with me.

Over the last eight years since I began my search I have heard from both sides of the adoption issue....some of these children weren't even told they had been adopted and found out by accident while others were told that they had been 'rescued' from mothers that didn't 'want' them. Some were actually lucky enough to have kind, understanding a/parents that told them that they were given up out of love. These adopted children (and I am one of them) and their birth mothers have that gaping, Primal Wound....which appears never to get addressed. As a first mom, I feel it. As an adoptee, I feel it. For those of you unfamiliar, the Primal Wound refers to the fact that we are carried by our first moms; being an actual part of her physical anatomy, as she was ours....her blood flowing through my veins and mine flowing back through hers, sharing her nourishment, her emotions and all the while hearing her voice and feeling her movement...for approximately 40 weeks. She's all that we know. She's as much a part of our biological make-up as we are hers while inside the womb. Then we're born....out into the bright, cold world. Most of us (like me AND my son) were taken from our first moms at birth...never to be reunited in intimacy as mother and child. So, here we are...tiny, helpless infants...the only voice we've known, the woman with whom we shared our biological selves with, the heart beat that we knew and shared for all those weeks...but she's gone. She's left with a sudden removal of someone that was an actual part of her....gone. Connection still present but physically removed. That, my friends, in a nut-shell, is the Primal Wound. This, my friends, should be a subject that anyone looking to adopt and anyone thinking of surrendering their child should have to be counseled in...MANDATORY. To me, it's like a giant hole in my heart that never heals...not even after I had my two AMAZING daughters.

Now, I'd give just about anything I have to be able to switch places with my son's adoptive parents...hell, anyone's adoptive parents....so that they can spend even 10 minutes with the pain and anguish that comes with losing that child...with wondering if they're ok...with wondering if their lives WERE better for the sacrifices we've made. It was for the children, after all, that we're told all this was all for....and that's why the majority of the first moms I know did it...because 'they' told us it was what was 'best' for our babies. So you spend the next decades wondering and worrying about whether what 'they' told us was true....all the while we still have to go on with life...finish school (like I was DETERMINED to do even AFTER the school tried to throw me out for being a 'poor example of moral fiber'), marry (or not), work....life still moves forward whether we hurt for our children or not. This is my life. These were my choices. My choices created a life. A life that was allowed to begin...that, my friends, is something that I shall never, ever regret.

Melanee