5 Ways to be your Own Best Friend

Tags

adoption, Authenticity, Friendship, Resourcefulness, Self-realization, serenity, Sysiphys

Some days it’s hard to realize you are gaining on it.

The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing, and face us with the reality of our powerlessness, that is the friend who cares.
-Henry Nouwen, Dutch-born priest and writer

For the most part, I enjoy a sense of progress in my adoptee’s journey toward wholeness. Some days, however, I feel like Sysiphys, the character in Greek mythology who pushes a massive boulder uphill, reaching the top by sundown but the very next morning being forced to start again at the bottom and push uphill all over again.

As I talk with friends about challenges they are facing, I realize that I am not alone. One does not have to be a “recovering adoptee” to find life full of problems to be overcome, tasks to be accomplished and conundrums that seem to have no end. And while I am blessed to have wonderful and compassionate friends who are never to busy to listen to my latest thorny scenario, one solution I’ve found is to be my own best friend.

Having said that, I’m offering five ways to nurture and appreciate yourself:

1. Let the past be the past. Do not hold grudges against yourself.
2. Remember, when troubles seem to be ganging up against you, that “Mama said there’d be days like this.”
3. Be true to YOU. As far as your self-definition is concerned, be an island. Quit comparing yourself unfavorably with others. Jealously isn’t called the “green-eyed monster” for nothing.
4. Work on fine-tuning your sense of humor. Learn to laugh at yourself.
5. Remember that YOU are not your thoughts.

Life is like a river. We can either enjoy the journey, rowing gently down the stream, or we can let our emotions control our thoughts, feeling a vague dissatisfaction and lack of contentment. One very powerful way to row gently down the stream is to treat yourself as you would a dear, cherished friend.

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Join Elaine for blog posts, published monthly on Mondays. Wide-ranging topics, from travel, hiking, nature, daily living, to personal development. If you are involved in the adoption triangle (adoptee, adopted parent or birthparent) and would like to contribute a guest post, please contact her. We’d love to hear from you!

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Running to my Roots-Part One

Tags

adoption, birthfather, cultural heritage, finding family, Italian heritage, Italy, recovery, running

In Italy, I traveled through miles of my birth family’s history…

As an adult adoptee looking back, one of my regrets was not growing up with my Italian heritage. In my memoir The Goodbye Baby: Adoptee Diaries, I lamented this “deprivation.” However, I DID at last meet my Italian-American birthfather just a few years before he passed away. I was able to travel with him to Abruzzo, where he was born.
When organizing my office last week, I came across this account, written in 2007 but never before published. As you, my readers, will see, I was heavily into running at the time. In retrospect, I realize how special that father-daughter journey it was, what a privilege that I got this glimpse of my heritage. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed re-living the experience…

Growing up adopted, relived through diary entires

I was an adopted child, five years old when my new parents took over. I met my biological father many years later. Together we visited the town in Italy where he was born, and there I spent an unforgettable week getting to know cousins and doing a lot of running. Giovanni Cecchini began life in the tiny village of San Martino Sulla Maruccina. It’s on the east side of the Italian boot, 17 miles from the Adriatic Sea. Even though I had been adopted by a loving mom and dad and my young life improved dramatically, I longed for many years to find out more about my heritage. Shortly before Giovanni’s death, that wish came true.
Giovanni left the old country at age two. He’d returned to his home village every year since World War II. I spent most of my life without knowing him. Our reunion did not bring the communication I’d hoped for. My father, in ill health, was taciturn and grouchy. Despite this disappointment, I was able to get in touch with my roots. And I discovered the joys of running in Italy.
Being with long-lost Italian cousins, hiking through the fields, hills and olive groves that had belonged to my ancestors, enjoying the scenic beauty of San Martino, with snowcapped mountains to the west and the sea to the east were magical. Best of all, however, was running in my newly-discovered native homeland.
Nikes on my feet, I explored the streets and pathways of tiny San Martino (population 800) as well as nearby countryside. No doubt I was an odd sight. I like to think of myself as the first American to have jogged through the village for the sake of simply running. If the citizens of San Martino were running, it would be to catch a stray sheep, goat or child.
For one thing, the villagers are elderly. The young leave for Pescara or Chieti or Guardiagrele to attend school or take jobs. Furthermore, why would people need to run? The San Martino way of life incorporates vigorous outdoor activities: harvesting olives, gathering firewood, tending animals, plowing fields. My spoken Italian was not versatile enough to know what the natives thought of my running through their streets every day.
But run for the sport of it I did, and for the sheer beauty of the landscape. Running was not only a way to enjoy the incredibly beautiful countryside but also to work off the delicious pasta consumed during three-hour lunches.
San Martino-ans are not into lycra and singlets, so early each morning I donned pedal pushers and an oversized t-shirt borrowed from my teenage sons. I decided it was better to look like a nerd than a shameless exhibitionist. Shortly after the roosters’ last crowing, I left my Aunt Guisipina’s house and jogged up a narrow cobblestone road to the main street of San Martino. Sweeping their porches, small elderly ladies in black stared at me, first in disbelief, then with amusement. After a day or so, they began greeting me with a friendly “Buon Giorno.”

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Looking at the world through adoption-colored glasses.

November is National Adoption Month, so I’m publishing another adoption-themed post from the past. The trip to Italy was life-changing, life affirming, and inspirational. Join me, Elaine Pinkerton, on alternate Mondays for adoptee perspectives.

Feedback is invited. Click at the top right to leave your comments.

Adoption: Still my “Something”

Tags

adoptee, adoption, adoption child, discover, empower, healing, separation, wounded

Note from Elaine: I continue to write adoption stories. Clara Jordan, heroine of my recent suspense novel All the Wrong Places, travels from Virginia to New Mexico hoping to locate an unknown birthmother. Instead of finding roots, she falls in love with a two-timer named Henry, a sly character who betrays her. She runs further into trouble as she searches petroglyphs for traces of a mother she’s never known. All the Wrong Places is available from http://www.pocolpress.com or from Amazon. My novel-in-progress, Clara and the Hand of Ganesha, takes our protagonist to the shore temple of Mahabalipuram in Tamil Nadu, India. Participating in NaNoWriMo, I plan to finish the first draft this month. Stay tuned!

 

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It’s been said that trauma is not a mystery, that it attaches itself to you in a way that’s hard to undo. My story, as related in The Goodbye Baby, offers living proof. Being an adoptee has added melodrama to my life, created a passion for writing, and ultimately inspired me to take off the masks and to discover who I really am.

Though I was fortunate enough to land in an adoptive family who loved and cherished me, it could not make up for losing that first “mother connection.” My birth mother and I said goodbye before I started first grade, and I waited 38 years for her to come back into my life. I was deeply wounded by the separation.

My struggles have been with feeling abandoned, isolated, and rejected. I’ve worried for years that I will be misunderstood and that I’m simply not good enough- as a daughter, a friend, a partner, a mother, or even as a human being.

With my infant son in Greece

Because of being adopted, I felt small and insignificant. Probably because adoption wasn’t something my family discussed, my negative assumptions became deeply embedded. Throughout my adult years, I accomplished a great deal, but in my mind, I was never admirable. Harmful pangs of inadequacy took root and shaped my outlook, my decisions, my disastrous romantic choices.  Until I re-read my diaries, I never realized that I myself had invented the self-damaging myth.

How did I deal with my adoption-induced complexes? My adoptive parents had to raise a delinquent teenager who drank excessively, stayed out too late and attracted bad boyfriends. As I grew older, I tended to be an over-achiever: running nine marathons to lower my finishing time, yet always “keeping score” and endlessly coming up short.

Thirty years ago, when I first started to write about my adoption, the title of my book was Reunions. My plan was to meet both my biological parents and write about finding the missing puzzle pieces. I met my original parents, but the reunions were not what I hoped for.  The pieces were in place but the puzzle remained. Only writing The Goodbye Baby completed the picture.

After both sets of parents died, I found that looking into the past gave me the wisdom to see where I’d been and how to go forward.

 

 

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What my adoption has taught me is that the world reflects my inner reality, that my happiness or unhappiness depend on my actions and not on outside forces. I’ve learned that it is never too late to make a fresh start.

I have always known I would be a writer. In the summer of 1962, I wrote in my diary,

“Some of this frantic recording is wasted energy. How can I have a future as a writer?…I need to find something to say.”

The theme of adoption is that “something.”

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Join Elaine on alternate Mondays for reflections on adoption and sneak previews of her newest novel, Clara and the Hand of Ganesha.

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In Pursuit of Roots

Tags

adoptee, adoption, adoption child, celebrity adoption, diary about adoption, elaine pinkerton, family histor, family roots, family tree, friends, juniper tree, the goodbye baby, wounded, writing

Dear Readers: Family matters have lately consumed me and there’s been no time to write. Enjoy this re-posting of thoughts originally published in 2012. The lack of “roots,” though I’ve come to grips with it, continues to be a challenge. If you’re an adoptee and have ever felt the need for a family tree, please send your feedback. Like other adoptees I’ve met, I’m still searching for the answers!

Last night I watched a program on public television that reminded me of being an adoptee. The emptiness and longing for a tribe of my own, a feeling I wrongly assumed I had put to rest, was back with a vengeance.

“Finding your Roots,” which featured three celebrities exploring their family trees, was all about searching to find a place where you belong, piecing together the past, and learning where and how your ancestors lived. The show was well presented and dramatized the interviewees’ journeys to discover their their true heritage.

My outsider status syndrome immediately kicked in. How fortunate, I thought, to even possess a genealogy that you could call your own. Growing up as an adoptee, I longed for years to claim a so-called “family tree.” I’d been to Italy with my birthfather Giovanni Cecchini. After our reunion, we travelled to Abruzzi, where he was born. I met my non-English-speaking cousins, aunts and uncles. Following the journey to Italy, my birthfather’s second wife (not my birthmother) helped me secure a detailed listing of paternal relatives.

With my adoptive mom’s help, I’d was able to chart out a family tree for my ancestry record, going back just a couple centuries. Those two charts were intellectual exercises, but I couldn’t relate to them.

Two family trees, but neither really fit who I was. Though I had the DNA of the biological parentage, I was shaped and molded by my adoptive parents. Rather than give in to an emotional meltdown, however, I thought long and hard about why the “Finding your Roots” program tried to break my heart. Tried but failed.

When I was young, I made up a myth about being adopted.The underlying theme was “Oh, poor me.” That was a way of reacting to everything, seemingly as fixed as the stars in the Big Dipper or the belt of the constellation Orion. However, I was not a fixed star and I could shape a new truth.

Juniper Tree. Everything, seemingly as fixed as the stars in the Big Dipper or the belt of the constellation Orion. However, I was not a fixed star and I could shape a new truth.

 

I decided to emulate the indomitable juniper tree. It will send roots down 25 feet in order to survive. Here’s a description from the National Park Service’s website:

“Junipers grow in some of the most inhospitable landscapes imaginable, thriving in an environment of baking heat, bone-chilling cold, intense sunlight, little water and fierce winds. Often they appear to grow straight out of solid rock.”

This is the kind of family tree that will serve me well.

Join Elaine on alternate Mondays for reflections on adoption and life. Your feedback is invited!

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ADOPTING THE LIGHT

Tags

Adopted daughter, adoption, Attitude, healing, Hiking, Hope, Injury, Love and loss, Positivity

ADOPTING THE LIGHT

My friend Shirley Melis observes, “It’s no so much what happens to you but what you do with it.” She’s written a best-selling memoir, Banged-Up Heart – Dancing with Love and Loss, about losing her husband, falling in love with a man who swept her off her feet, marrying him and then losing that husband to cancer. She survived those tragedies and found love a third time. Her positive attitude and resilience so inspired me, I recently added an accolade to her many five-star reviews on Amazon.

Today’s post is not about bereavement, but about losing and then regaining health and fitness. Rather than a banged-up heart, I acquired a banged-up back. Five months ago I fell and suffered a spinal compression fracture. It happened during a hike in New Mexico’s Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Inattentiveness and treacherous footing.: I stumbled, slipped into a rocky mountain stream and landed on sharp boulders(https://tinyurl.com/yb2ruz3k).

Because of possible side-effects, I opted not to have surgery. The neurologist assured me that eventually the fractured vertebra would mend on its own. Thus began a slow, arduous healing process. Physical therapy, swimming, arnica and acupuncture were just a few of the measures I embraced. Amazingly, there was a silver lining to the cloud that now hovered over my life. Because I couldn’t hike three mornings a week, I had time to finish the novel I’d been putting off. The injury created a gift of time. I’m getting back to hiking, but in a modified way.

As an adoptee, I’ve learned that emotional adjustments are the way to succeed. At age five, I was taken from flimsy foster care arrangements to the warm, loving home of a college professor and his wife, my adoptive parents. On one hand, I felt completely abandoned. Ripped away from all I’d ever known, I had to pretend to be the “real” daughter. It’s taken a lifetime to realize that the problem (of being abandoned) was actually an opportunity. It’s taken years to shift from feeling victimized to being the heroine of my own life. The new attitude is fed by love of family and friends, nurtured by gratitude, and maintained by daily journaling.

When 2018 began, I chose one word as my new year’s resolution: LIGHT. On January 1, while cleaning the perpetually cluttered home office, I came across notes from an Oprah Winfrey/Deepak Chopra 21-day online workshop. The topic: “Getting Unstuck~Creating a Limitless Life.” Each one of the 21 days focused on a new intention. The following ten were the ones I embraced…

I am fulfilled when I can be who I want to be
I am never stuck when I live in the present
I embrace the newness of this day
I am in charge of my brain, not the other way around
Today I am creating a better version of myself
I am aware of being cared for and supported
My awareness opens the door to new possibilities.
My life is dynamic because I welcome change.
I deserve a life without limitations.
Every day unfolds the next step in my journey.

These are resolutions particularly appropriate not just for the “adoptee frame of mind,” but also for anybody who seeks to envision a personal encouraging light. It may be the light after losing a loved one, the light of healing, or simply the light of a new appreciation for being alive. Whatever your light may be, it’s worth seeking.

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Join Elaine on alternate Mondays for reflections on adoption and life. Her newest novel Clara and the Hand of Ganesh, a sequel to All the Wrong Places, is a work-in-progress. Your comments are invited. If you would like to be a guest blogger on an adoption-related theme, email me at deardiaryreadings@me.com

After the fall, beginning the road to recovery

To Thine Own Self Be True

Tags

adoptee, adoption, adoption child, daughter, empower, healing, Holidays, national adoption awareness month, national adoption month, separation, writing

How can you be true to yourself if you grew up not being allowed to know who you are?

‘This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man. – Polonius in William Shakespeare’s  “Hamlet”

As an adoptee, hiding behind the mask of being “normal,” of masquerading as the “real” daughter, I could never live my life authentically. Early on, I assumed that there was something shameful about not being born to my mom and dad. The best way to behave was to strive for perfection in everything.
No matter how I tried, however, it was never enough. In lieu of facts, my imagination took over. I was competing with that other daughter that my parents couldn’t have: A ghost of a girl who looked like my adoptive parents and resembled them in ways that I simply could not. I had to make them proud, to prove myself.

At age five, I had (symbolically) been “born again.” That old life was just a warm up and I was supposed to forget about it. Never ask about those first parents. Don’t think about those years before being “rescued.” If I wasn’t successful in my role, I could be sent back to careless people who never should have been foster parents. Maybe it was fear that kept me from pressing for answers about my first years.

That said, I had wonderful adoptive parents. They helped me accomplish and excel

Being true to myself meant writing more books!

in many ways. Striving is not necessarily a bad thing. I did well academically, worked at age 16 to save money for college and graduate school, embraced writing at an early age as what I really wanted to do. My ambition was boundless. In many ways, that has served me well.

The downside is that I never “arrived.” Instead of being able to savor my successes, I kept raising the bar. Only now can I relax and quit being an overachiever.

Do I have advice to those who cannot accept their adoption? I can offer only some thoughts I would like to share. Knowing ones parents certainly has value, but if that knowledge must be incomplete or even missing, SEARCH FOR WHO YOU REALLY ARE.

If possible, avoid people who sap your energy. Vow to do something good for yourself every day, even a small act. Try a week of being your own best friend., and see if you start feeling better, especially about being an adoptee!

This above all: to thine own self be true
Read more by clicking here! 

I Hereby Adopt a Mountain

Tags

adoptee, Climbing, Hiking, mountains, national adoption month, Paths, Santa Fe, Solitude, Vistas

Note from Elaine: In the spirit of hiking for happiness I’m re-publishing  this step-by-step account of a beautiful Santa Fe, New Mexico outing. It’s also a chapter in my new book SANTA FE ON FOOT-EXPLORING THE CITY DIFFERENT.

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To celebrate November, National Adoption Month, I hereby adopt a mountain.
Monte Sol (Sun Mountain) gives me inspiration for writing and a new appreciation for simply being alive.

. Allow me to explain…

Readers may know that my favorite short day hike is Sun Mountain, often called by its Spanish name, “Monte Sol.” Along with three other prominent foothills of the Rockies, it offers a distinctive silhouette. The skyline of southeastern Santa Fe goes like this: Picacho Peak, a near triangle topped by a slanted nipple shape; long galumphing Atalaya, a favorite five-mile hike; and Monte Sol, the most perfectly symmetrical of the three.

Monte Sol is right off Old Santa Fe Trail.

Monte Sol is beautiful and convenient. I go there almost every day. When the City of Santa Fe gained permission from landowners for access from the road, they established a trailhead to Monte Sol. It was a landslide victory for local and visiting walkers. The path up Monte Sol became more accessible to not just me (I happen to live practically next door) but to everyone in the world. Often it’s an up-and-down affair, but when I have time, I take advantage of rocky outdoor seating that’s perfect for sunning, meditating, eating a sandwich, writing, or simply watching the clouds drift by.

Though it’s only 8/10ths of a mile to the top of Monte Sol, the elevation gain is nearly

Almost there!
Almost there!

1,000 feet. The steepness makes for a good workout. The final third of the ascent involves over 100 switchbacks and requires one to step up, up, and ever up.

THE HIKE PROCEEDS IN THREE ACTS: a beginning, middle and end. The first section of path is curved but gentle. The second takes the hiker up a series of large rocks and to a view less of the city below than toward other, unnamed foothills. The contours became darker as the day advances. The final act, most demanding, requires careful footwork as the path narrows, at times disappearing. One mounts a virtual rock staircase, finally reaching a ten-foot wide rock that looks as though it might have been an ocean floor.

From then on, it’s a mostly dirt walkway until the “Ah Ha” moment of reaching the top. Surprisingly, the summit of Monte Sol is a flat area the size of a couple football fields. A panoramic view unfolds in every direction, and one can understand why early settlers compared the high desert terrain to a kind of inland ocean. The southwestern palate of green, sage, tan, brown and purple stretch beneath one in layers. Huge white clouds billow overhead.

There, with the city stretched out below, the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and the Pecos Wilderness to the North, the seeker can find peace and serenity. On warm afternoons, it is often tempting to stay awhile, basking in the sun like a lazy lizard.

That said, though one can find solitude here, on this particular Sunday afternoon, I encounter a dozen other hikers. There’s the man with the Irish Setter with a yellow bandana around his neck (the dog’s neck, not the man’s). Along come the mothers of small children who’ve managed to train their little ones to tackle the arduous walk but to make it fun, and the young woman with headphones who is running rather than walking. I can’t imagine how she would jog the steeper boulder sections, but assume she pauses to pick over the rocks before continuing her fast pace.

Then I remember my younger self, a Me who was always running and training for the next marathon. I would not have been daunted by a few precipitous passes. A lifetime ago…I miss those running days. And yet, I’m grateful to be covering the same territory. I’m glad to be out here, slower but still strong.

Enough of Monte Sol musing. It’s time to leave the summit and head back down into the real world. I watch gigantic black birds circling overhead and take a final look at the distant road stretching south to Albuquerque, then hike down to the flatlands. I know my adopted trail much better now, and I feel completely ready for an afternoon of writing.

Do YOU have a path that leads you to serenity and healing?

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Join me on alternate Mondays for reflections on adoption and life. If you are an adoptee or adoptive parent or are planning to adopt, I’ll gladly consider your ADOPTION STORY for publication on my website. Send me an email with your ideas, and I promise to get back to you.~Elaine

Adopting the airwaves–>I’m on the radio today!

Tags

adoption, Dealing with Adoption, India, Novel-in-progress, The Writing Life, Walking

At 4 p.m. Mountain Time, 101.1 F.M. KSFR–Wednesday afternoon I’ll be talking about my six published books with show host Abigail Adler. Please tune in!

The Last Word

Wednesdays at 4:00 pm

• Hosted by Abigail Adler

• 

For people who read, for people who write, for people who want to publish, or for people who are just curious…What do writers think? What do writers really do?  Find out – listen to THE LAST WORD: Conversations with Writers every Wednesday at 4 pm with host, Abigail Adler

 

Once Again, It’s Poetry Monday

Tags

adoption, Beginnings, Dealing with Adoption, Endings, English Romantic Era, Finding Home, Harvest, John Keats, Poetry

It is possible that I may always be searching for adoption recovery. Does this quest never end? Maybe the yellow brick road leads nowhere? Perhaps, as Dorothy discovers

Escaping is sometimes the best way to find oneself.

in The Wizard of Oz, there is no place like home? In the case of the adoptee, it seems necessary to come home to oneself. To do that may require devious methods, even escaping. Today, I’m proposing that escapism is not only allowed but beneficial. Rather than further lamenting my lack of completing the adoption recovery “final exam,” I’m celebrating the end of warm days and the prelude to Winter. Revisiting a past literary love, I summon British poet John Keats.

John Keats, who lived from 1795-1821, created some of the most beautiful poetry of the Romantic Era. His tribute to Fall has been called “the most serenely flawless poem in English.” Read, imagine, and savor…

Autumn is a great time to lose oneself in the world of poetry.

Ode to Autumn
by John Keats

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;

To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease;

For Summer has o’erbrimm’d their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,

Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

Spares the next swath and all its twinèd flowers:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

Steady thy laden head across a brook;
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Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—

While barrèd clouds bloom the soft-dying day

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

Among the river-sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Join Elaine every other Monday for reflections on adoption and life.

Adoptee Stories —>Share YOURS

Tags

adoptee, adoption, Celebrating Adoption, Contest, Guest Posting, memoir, national adoption month, Pros and Cons, Reflections

This Fall, I am inviting first person stories to my site.

When the publisher of The Goodbye Baby suggested a Goodreads book giveaway, I seized the opportunity to relaunch my memoir. Rather than”A Diary about Adoption,” it would now be subtitled “Adoptee Diaries.” The book comprises four decades of my personal journals as I came of age, as I accepted the reality that the wounds of adoption had to be healed. It’s been a fascinating journey, one that has shaped my life and continues to impact future writing.
In that spirit, I am opening the door to the adoption stories of others. These must be first person accounts, submitted online (see instructions below). They can be written from the point of view of the adoptee him or herself, parents wanting to adopt a child, birthparents searching or in reunion with their biological children.
The submission period runs throughout the rest of September and early October. Acceptance for publication is up to the editor. During the five Mondays of November, I’ll publish the best of the stories, and I will also send you a present (one of my published books) by snail mail.
If you’re adopted, here are the questions to consider:
* How old were you when you were adopted?
* Was it an open or closed adoption?
* Were siblings adopted with you?
* In what ways has growing up adopted affected you? Why? Or, if being adopted has not affected you, why not?
* Did you meet your biological parents, and if so, how did that go?
* Do you feel that adoptions be open? Why or why not?
* What misconceptions about adoption have you encountered?
* What is the most positive aspect of your personal adoption? Negatives?

Story entries may also include accounts from those who want to adopt a baby or older child, birthmother/birthfather experiences, accounts by adoptive parents.

Your personal account can range from 250 to 400 words. Please edit carefully before submission. Avoid an angry or accusatory tone; keep your approach conversational. Humor is always welcome. Remember that your story may make all the difference to readers who might be struggling with “being adopted issues.” Deadline is October 20. The top five submissions will appear on TheGoodbyeBaby website during November, which is also National Adoption Month. Please indicate whether or not you grant permission for use of your piece in a future book.

Along with your story, include a brief bio and a cameo photo. E-mail queries and submissions to deardiaryreadings@me.com.