The Old Tin Shed

I know this is a topic I covered last year, but my thoughts about adoption continue to change over time as I learn more about my own and others experiences. You see adoption is seen as a nice clean solution for both the child the child's mother and family and the family that adopts the child.  But its not that simple. Firstly overseas adoption from poor countries.  This has me all worked up, why should we in the west or even the wealthy east have the right to buy a child.  Our wealth gives undue influence to a poor woman or family about giving up a child.  Like harvesting body parts from the poor of India to be used in the West.  I find this difficult to swallow.  I know right now I am about to get howled down by all those childless families about how desperately they want a child.  Here in lies another major problem.  Because these families so badly want children they raise them up onto a pedestal that the child cannot possibly be.  Th...

I think I have mentioned a couple of times in the past, that I am adopted.  I was adopted as a baby, and my mum and dad as I know them were my adopted parents.  My sister is also adopted, from a different mother. 4 Corners on the Australian ABC had a program recently on forced adoptions.  I wanted to watch it, but found I couldnt.  What little i do know of my birth mother is the fact I was taken without her consent. Maybe we are not supposed to see some things, maybe its still a painful thing for me, but I look at how my sister and I turned out, and we have both had the a-typical adopted child life.  We both suffer from low self-esteem, and use food to help us cope.  We both try to avoid conflict rather than stand up for ourselves.  And now even she is showing signs of mental illness. Im not proud of my past and have stuck my hands up many times to admit fault and ultimately responsibility.  But when I have doctors say to me "wow you la...

Well this is the first of one of those heavy life changing blog posts that I will do from time to time.  This topic is very close to my own heart and what is my meaning of family. Some 38 years ago my parents picked up a baby boy blue eyes blond hair.  He was not born to them but to another woman. For reasons still unknown to that child today, she decided that she should give me up for adoption. They say that children make a family, that they are often the glue that holds a family together when times get tough. My family wasn't like that. Within a year of my adoption my sister joined the family she was also adopted. What did I mean when I said my family wasn't like that.  Its not that my parents were bad parents, in fact they tried their very best.  But they had one hurdle that they could never possibly cover.  That both of us showed psychological signs of illness because we had been adopted.  Most if not all children who are adopted have some kind of...