NJ’s adoption leave bill lives!

Rally your troops. Circle your wagons. Write a legislator.
It’s been a year since S-2249, New Jersey’s paid family leave bill, was introduced and it still has a pulse, folks.
On Thursday, Dec. 6, the measure will face its next test as it comes up for a vote by the state’s Assembly Labor Committee. This summer Gov. Jon [...]

Smell the fresh ink?

My latest column is up over at AFTH, and as usual, the link to it remains nestled in my sidebar. But in the interest of saving you a click or two, here’s what I had to say in the Fall installment of Musings of an Adoptive Mama:
Changing Leaves, Changing Minds

Some use the start of the [...]

Today’s NPR program on open records

If you can, tune in to NPR today at 3 pm (Eastern time) for its “Talk of the Nation” program which promises to be a lively discussion about access to birth and adoption records.
Panelists are Adam Pertman of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, Tom Atwood of the National Council for Adoption as well as [...]

Opening adoption records

With all the hubbub today after the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute released its white paper, “For the Records: Restoring a Right to Adult Adoptees” — which recommends every state provide adoptees’ access to their original birth certificates — and news organizations picked up the report, thought I’d offer up the link to the full white [...]

Faces of First Moms

Nicole over at paragraphein is compiling photos of first moms and has begun crafting a most powerful slide show with a most simple purpose — showing how birth mothers aren’t any different than anyone else. Surely a fact that shouldn’t need explaining or proving. Sadly, though, it does.
She’s continuing to add photographs as she gets [...]

Date Night

Giggle, giggle.
Went on a date tonight, movie and dinner. (For me, the second movie in as many years. It’s about time, right?)
We saw adoption-themed Martian Child. (Still mulling that one over.)
During dinner, we had conversation. Conversation that didn’t include entertaining anyone else other than each other, or reaching for books and snacks from a nearby tote [...]

Calgon, take me away…

So I shut my eyes for just a quick minute last evening as Thomas put Maeve to bed … and then I woke up this morning.
Arg.
This means there’s a blip in my NaBloPoMo effort. Double-arg.
Clearly this also means I was more tired than I realized, but really? Twelve (blissful) hours went by and I didn’t [...]

What she said, dangit!

“Keeping [birth] records closed perpetuates the myth
that open adoption is a fringe movement,
flirting with the potentially dangerous idea
of not cutting adoptees off from their families of origin.”
***
“Closed records play into the fiction that there is something
shameful in adoptees’ pasts. … They reinforce the idea
that first parents should disappear into the shadows
after relinquishment if they know [...]

Playground Peek-a-Boo

If a picture is worth a thousand words, consider this a 2,000-plus word post.
“Playground Bliss”

NaBloPoMo Stats: 6 down, 24 to go.

All in a Day

It’s been four months since I went part-time at the newspaper. Since then, I’ve had two days each week at home with Maeve. My mindset is improved, my house a bit better organized and, most of all, my heart is so much happier. After all, it’s two days a week where Maeve and I take on [...]