Is there an echo in here? I mean, in here, in my head. Or is it out there, in the big wide world. Or both? Maybe I’m having a flashback… or a hot flash… nope, can’t be that, since it’s “that” time of the month. Hmmm. Well, maybe you can tell me what’s going on… I keep having these visions:

It’s the 70’s, Schoolhouse Rock... “Energy … we’re looking to try and find some new kinds of …... more

[Continued from HERE.]

Birthing children is clearly no problem in Rwanda: staying alive long enough to actually raise, protect and support them IS a problem. Forget about malaria and the perpetual threat of re-emerging violence, perhaps even war. Forget about poor safe water sources and basic hygiene facilities/infrastructure. Let’s talk about HIV/AIDS, the leading cause of death in Rwanda. According to the most... more

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The fact is any discussion concerning population issues in Rwanda can not be had without a discussion of land (not the case with China.)

Despite the genocide just over a dozen years ago, Rwanda is so small, so crowded, that there is a dire shortage of land upon which each family can raise their children. Back in the day, after independence, family plots were given of... more

Word out of Rwanda about the introduction of family planning measures that will, ideally, decrease population growth has been met with quite a mixed response from the general public and media outlets alike. It seems as though people have a need to over-compartmentalize, comparing situations that don’t have much in common simply because they address the same topic, in this case efforts by China to curb its population and those being considered by Rwanda.

Irony, folks…... more

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Three days after I finished the temp gig with his company, Mr. H was scheduled to meet with his birth family in order to play the biggest game of ‘To Tell the Truth’ that has, perhaps, ever been played in any of their lives.

I am fairly certain I don’t need to delineate the emotional upheaval Mr. H. was experiencing when we met nor the implications of the choices made by all the... more

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Mr. H went on to tell me that he had done something he thought was very bad. He was furious when he found out that he had suffered so much, so long with his ‘parents’ and that the whole thing had been a lie. He kept getting tripped up trying to explain how he felt to me.

What he did was to immediately sell his childhood home and use the money to search for his birth... more

She and I were talking before lunch when we probably should have been working. I had started temping for this major scholastic publishing company that morning, but the other secretary in the office, a Long Island, Italian-American version of the energizer bunny, had drawn me in to yet another gab. Good for “productivity?” Absoluetley not. Hilarious, especially in light of her thick, “Ow my Gooawd,” accent and bip-didi-be-bop-bouncing thought process. Absolutely.

The latest water cooler gab (without ever quite making... more

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Even if you manage to create the mother of all scrapbooks (uber-scrapbooking?), from my experience an equally important ingredient for helping your child become well-adjusted is to start to remember all the details the minute he/she enters your family ... and to verbally tell those stories often until they are a legacy in and of themselves. I believe storytelling, going over memories... more

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So many of the information gaps that can niggle and glare at an adoptee aren’t, at first, the biggest topics like “Who gave birth to me?” “Why didn’t they keep me?” nor are the gaps felt only in the lack of heritage, medical history and other nuts-and-bolts details. Sometimes the gaps can be felt just in the ‘normal’ stories that non-adoptees have that adoptees don’t. I think this is more... more

Children love, love, LOVE to hear stories about themselves. They love being told again and again how they inspired their mother to binge on chocolate covered pickles or dirt or chalk or toe nails or… whatever other weird thing the pregnancy that brought them into the world inspired. Children crave infamous tales of themselves: the mid-night dash to the hospital to have her, how he looked like a hairy little old man when he first came out, the intensity of his scream or the ooo’s and ahhh’s of the nurses... more