Listen To My Spot On Alaska Public Radio, Adoption in Alaska
This May I was a guest on "Alaska Public Radio", an affiliate of National Public Radio (NPR). They connected me live from the NPR Studio in Sacramento where I told my story of being an adoptee who also gave up a baby up for adoption. (Listen below.)
The Weight of Grief
My baby was born in 1973, the year Roe v. Wade made abortion legal, but that was never an option in my Catholic family. No one ever asked me if I wanted to keep my baby, and because I was fifteen, it was assumed that I would give it up for adoption.
I got to hold my daughter just a few times during the three days I was in the hospital. They let me because I, too, was adopted and my baby was the only blood relative I had ever known. As we drove away from the hospital, I looked over my shoulder as a life with my daughter melted from view. I couldn’t breathe; the weight of my grief was crushing. Out of desperation, I turned my eyes back to the road and said to myself, “I just won’t think about it right now, I just won’t think about it right now, I just won’t think about it right now.”Those eight words became my mantra.
Audio Links
Click here to listen to my 8-minute interview
Click here, for the hour-long show, Talk of Alaska, Host Anne Hillman speaks with birth moms and adoptive moms about their experiences with adoption, how adoption has changed over time, and misconceptions about the process.
Mother's Day Weekend
If you read my journal entry on November 25, 2017 titled, “Unfinished Business,” then you might remember the life-changing experience I had when visiting the adoption agency in Anchorage last summer, 26 years after giving my baby up in a closed adoption.
"My participation in the workshop led to my appearance on Talk of Alaska."
As a result of that visit, I participated in, Passage Writes: Alaska Birth-Moms’ Stories, a project devoted to enabling birth-moms (women who made adoption plans for their children) to tell their stories in their own words. The organizer had read my blog and invited me to help facilitate the workshop, which took place on Mother’s Day weekend. There were six birth mothers in attendance, all with different situations and who had relinquished their babies at different times. To be in a room sharing stories with other birth mothers felt like a reunion with survivors of the Titanic.
