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The ‘take action’ options are so multitudinous I could not ever think of them all. What I do know, am thinking, is that mobilizing yourself empowers you. Wallowing, suffocating, in your pain, in the feeling that you have been victimized, does not empower you, it chains you to that pain so that there may come a time when you CAN’T come up for air, even if you want to do so.

Taking action doesn’t just mean in the obvious adoption (or anti-adoption) realm. It is entirely possible you are suffering from a bad case of Ad-obsess-ose: my newly coined "clinical" (ahem) term for adoption-obsession overdose. There is a special kind of adrenalin shot to pull those afflicted by Ad-obsess-ose out of their blue-skin, paralytic, overdose state. It is a massive injection of perspective straight to the soul. You don’t have to travel far and wide to get this, though you certainly could and perhaps should.

Close to home, take your vacation volunteering or even just traveling in the “backwoods of ‘modern’ America”: volunteer to spend time with the children of convicted criminals (Do you know how many children in the U.S. have one or both parents in prison? Estimates are between 3 - 7.6 million… that is the population of a not-so-small country!), lend a hand to organizations like Habitat for Humanity that help to build homes for people, even in the U.S., who don’t have a place to live or what they do have is incredibly substandard, offer to hold and cuddle babies that are born drug-addicted providing them with some physical comfort they so desperately need.


If you don’t have time (or don’t want to find a way to make time) to actually volunteer and interact, at the very least make it a point to go to neighborhoods and places that remind you of how real-life is for other people … how it could have been for you (and I’m not talking about posh, gated villas or even the “ranch” houses of suburbia.) Have you ever been to some of the places in the U.S. of A. that do not have electricity or indoor plumbing, not because the people living there like retro-life or ‘keeping it simple,’ but because they cannot afford these services and/or the services are not available to them? Did you know these places even exist in our country? Have you ever seen the inside of an inner-city squat? Have you ever visited a shelter dedicated to homeless children? Have you ever spoken to any of those children? Listened to their story? Did you know there are approximately 1.5 million homeless children in America? For that matter, have you ever spoken to a homeless adult? Listened to their story? Have you walked through the ‘bad neighborhood’ in your small town? Do you talk to your friends about how ‘those people’ live and condemn it without even knowing how they live?

As you do these things, if you do these things, please keep in mind that the point is perspective, not pity. These people are getting on with the art of living despite odds and hardships and while they deserve compassion, they in NO way deserve your pity.

Here are some links, just in case you would like to get started RIGHT NOW in your quest to get kinetic:
To work with homeless children.
For a gagillion different opportunities to take action.
If you are interested in mobile schools for homeless children.
Being a Big Brother or Big Sister never goes out of style.
Even our government would like us to volunteer … it frees up more money for war.
For some perspective of ‘issues’ for children with one or both parents in prison … and how some are taking action rather than sitting in their pain and anger .


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