Aspects of Life – Thoughts and Conversations
No one wants to talk about suicide. But NO one wants to talk about adoption and suicide. Because, as Judith Modell writes in her book A Sealed and Secret Kinship: the culture of Policies and Practices in American Adoption (2002), “Adoption is a benign, pleasurable and apparently uneventful event–except to those who are involved.” I’ve heard […]
Last September I spoke with author, editor and blogger, Deborah Kalb. It was the first interview I had done regarding the writing of Bitterroot: A Salish Memoir of Transracial Adoption, and it was eye-opening for me. I’d finished writing the book, but I had not spent a lot of time reflecting on it; after three years […]
This first appeared in Gazillion Voices, November 2014, Issue 16 Recently, after giving a presentation on American Indian Transracial adoption, I was asked a question. “Where do you think you’d be now if you hadn’t been adopted?” Without pausing, the man who asked the question answered for me. “I bet you wouldn’t be giving presentations […]
THE AMERICAN WEST is stunningly beautiful. Its images, quilted together, form a landscape that can be brought to mind with the aroma of pine that stings my nostrils, the feel of soil between my fingers, the sound of a waterfall or the taste of chokecherry jelly that Mom used to make in August. To me, everything […]
My response to Daniel Ibn Zayd’s (of Transracialeyes.com blog fame) query regarding recruitment advertising for transracial adoption research. As a researcher who has studied “us”, I would like to weigh in. I, as an American Indian transracial adoptee, wanted to study us because no one was talking about our experiences. As transracial adoptees we […]
A friend of mine asked if I would ever be interested in helping adoptees search for their birth-families, or assist in some way an adoptee’s return home. Or perhaps I could work with them to understand the difficulties and challenges that lie ahead for them once they make that decision. However, how do you tell […]