Agency Definitions_2011

Financing Your Adoption

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Addressing the challenges of the new LGBTQ family constellation. This workshop is for LGBTQ adoptive parents who are currently parenting.

Topics addressed:

• Care and nurture
• Single parenting
• Birth parents
• Roles in a couple dynamic
• Family and institutional dynamics
• Community support and family identity

Time: 6:00-8:00 pm
Location:Q Center, 4115 N Mississippi Avenue, Portland, OR 97217
Cost: FREE! No registration required. 

Support group meetings will address common questions that prospective adoptive parents ask at different points in the process of adopting with a focus on LBGTQ interests, as well as the challenges of the new LGBTQ family constellation.

Groups will be lead by a team of adoption professionals and members of the LGBTQ adoption community.

View Flyer

Space limited to 12 children

Dates:

• September 24, 2011 from 10:00 am – 12:00 pm - Parent Orientation (required)
• Tuesdays starting October 11, ending December 13, 2011 from 3:45 pm – 5:15 pm – Kids meet
• Parents meet for discussion during each kids’ meeting

Location:

• SE UpLift Community Center in Portland, Oregon

Cost:

• $390 for 8 child group sessions + 8 parent group sessions + 2-hr Parent Intro (1 parent).  A 20% discount for add’l sibling or parent enrolled in same group

Facilitators:

• Astrid Dabbeni, Executive Director of Adoption Mosaic
• MereAnn Reid, MA, Child & Family Therapist for Northwest Adoption Support.  MereAnn is certified in post-adoption support with many years’ experience working with foster and adoptive families.

Adoptive parents can expect support with:

• Creating a child-centered trip
• Sharing ideas, support and hopes with fellow adoptive families
• Determining when is the right time for your child and your family to take a return trip
• Deciding who and where to visit (foster family, orphanage, finding spot, etc.)

Kids will:

• Participate in games and activities aimed to help express wishes and wonders about their trip
• Prepare for culture shock
• Meet other adoptees who’ve traveled to their birth country
• Create a self-care plan while they are on their trip

Adoption Travel Group Flyer

Registration Form

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View the flyer

This innovative two-part panel will give you unique insight into the process of reunion. In the morning we will hear from adoptees who are in the early stages of their reunion journey. After lunch we will hear from adoptees and their birth parents who have been reunited for around ten years or more.

This panel will address:

- What emotions happen after successfully searching and finding?What if you’re the one who was found?
- How might differences in culture and language affect your reunion?
- How do you build a relationship?
- How do you support a loved one who is experiencing reunion?
- How do you talk to family members about your reunion? What part do they play in reunion?

Date: TBA
Time: 10 am – 3 pm
Location: TBA
Cost: $45*

Pre-Registration is required.  Cancellation Policy

*Partial scholarships are available as funds allow. Please contact info@adoptionmosaic.org for more information.

Run Mama Run 2011 (last year’s info)

2010′s run made our local news! View the video here>>

Please read the runner’s waiver here>>.

In the spring of 2009, a group of local mothers tried to register for their longstanding Mother’s Day tradition, a half marathon in another city, only to find the run had sold out in less than 12 hours!  At the suggestion of one of their husbands, these women talked to friends, who talked to other friends and before we knew it, Run Mama Run was born. The 3rd annual Run Mama Run, a celebration of mothers and motherhood is planned for Sunday, May 8th, 2011 at Portland’s Mt Tabor Park. 100 % of funds raised benefit Adoption Mosaic.

This is an event for the whole family, and you don’t have to run in order to participate, we will have crafts for the kids, will serve a breakfast of fruit, pastries, coffee and tea, plus have plenty of giveaways and raffle items!

What: 10k run, 5K walk (stroller friendly loop) and a 1/4 mile Kids Fun Run, plus – kids activities, crafts, breakfast and raffle

Date: Mother’s Day May 8th, 2011

Time: 9:30 am: Kids Fun Run , 10:00 am Run Mama Run (10K run/5K walk)

Where: Mt. Tabor Park, Portland, OR Covered Picnic Area “A” (near the amphitheater)

Cost: $45.00 (includes a tee-shirt), children’s run is free.

Day of Event Schedule/Logistics

MT. Tabor Run Route Map

Be sure to check out our sponsors!

Platinum

• Nike

Gold ($200.00+)

• Torso Torso
• Columbia Sportswear
• Roadrunner Sports
• Chocolab
• Metro Parent
• Portland Woman
• Clif Bar (Luna Bar),
• Trader Joes,
• Portland Children’s Museum,
• Zenana Spa, Capital Pacific Bank,
• Cooper’s Coffee  House,
• Dave’s Killer Bread,
• Amalfi’s Pizzaria/Pastaria, Title Nine

Silver ($50.00 – $100.00)

• Mother’s Bistro & Bar,
• Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI),
• Grand Central Bakery,
• Cupcake Jones,
• Run Like a Mother: The Book,
• Just Between Friends – Portland,
• Sound Roots,
• Baby Boot Camp
• Noah’s Bagels
• Rejuvenation Day Spa
• New Seasons Markets

Bronze (Coupons, donations for give aways)

• Clif Bar (Luna Bar),
• Portland Children’s Museum,
• Zenana Spa,
• Title Nine,
• Amalfi’s Pizzaria, Pastaria and Bar
• Noun
• Jim and Patty’s Coffee
• Ice Bands Northwest
• Emerald Tree
• Oregon Children’s Theater

“I don’t remember going into labor at all. I don’t even remember that much about being pregnant with you but I do remember being in the hospital. I was lying down.   There was a doctor with a mask on his face. He just came in, took you out and that was it.”

“I think I looked up,” she continues. “I wanted to see you but someone pushed me down again.” She presses against her own shoulder, as if to remind herself of that moment and what happened. Her hand drops to her lap. “Then you were gone and I was taken to another part of the hospital where there were no babies. I was put into a room with an older woman who had been recovering from some surgery. She asked, ‘What are you in for, Honey?’ like I was in prison.

“I told her I didn’t feel well,” she says. “That’s when the lies began.”

She looks at me as if I could or should understand and I suppose I do. I want to understand. I say nothing though.

“I went home and the birth was never mentioned again,” she said. “I was so depressed. I kept getting lower and lower. My family was watching me all the time.  Maybe they thought I would kill myself?”

She looks at me with the question, as if I have the answer.

I can only shrug and shake my head.

“When they finally left me alone in the house, I kicked the screen out of my window and walked to a mental hospital. A nice Indian doctor took me into a room and I talked about being depressed.”

“Did you tell him you had a baby?” I interrupt.

She shakes her head. “I just told him I was depressed and he gave me some lithium. I threw away the pills and went home. I never got caught for sneaking out and I never told my mother.”

She lays the photo of my infant self on the table and leans back. Her face is sallow. Her lips are curved down. The beautiful and confident woman at the airport and at breakfast has slipped away and the true Catherine is here—tormented, confused and angry.

“If I ever asked about you and how you were, my mother would tell me to forget the whole thing. She said it was over and you were happier with your new family. She told me no good could come from thinking about you.”

“When I thought I might search for you, when everyone else was searching, you know in the eighties and nineties? My mother told me I would just mess up your life and to let it go.”

The sun is bright in her hair now, making it shine all different shades of reddish-brown.  She looks so tired and so sad.

“I think about that,” she says. “Why didn’t I just search for you anyway? Why didn’t I defy her? I went against her wishes other times. I married Bill right out of high school. I got pregnant and went to Germany with him after he was drafted. All of that was pure defiance. Why didn’t I defy her when it came to you?”

She looks to me again, as if I know.

I have no answers for her.

She has no answers for me.

“You can have those baby pictures,” I hear myself say. “I don’t need them anymore. I never even look at them.”
“Oh, that would be wonderful,” Catherine says. She stacks the photos in a little pile and flips through them again.

~

The sun drops below a line of hills and long ribbons of gold and gray light reflect on the high clouds.

We hold hands while I drive Catherine back to the airport.

“What will come next?” she asks.

I am taken back by her question. It seems foolish in retrospect but all I anticipated and expected was today. I wanted to confirm I had been born to someone. What else is there?

“I don’t know,” I finally manage to say. “What do you want?”

Catherine tugs on the hem of her silk top and sits taller in her seat. “Well, I want to know you,” she says with the authority of a mother. “I want us to be in each other’s lives. You could move to Reno. That would solve a lot of our problems.”

I pull into the airport parking lot and laugh as if that’s a good one. Reno!

She’s not laughing and I make myself stop.

I turn off the car and tuck the keys into my purse.

“Well,” I say, clearing my throat. “My life is here, in Portland.”

Catherine pouts a little, as if I have just burst her bubble and I wonder—did she really think I would move to Nevada?  We only just met.

The engine ticks as it cools down and we sit in the quiet for a long time.

The experts—who specialize in reunion between birth mothers and adopted children—suggest a slow and careful “getting to know each other period.” Birth parents are warned to be cautious and respectful during reunion. Adoptive children must learn how to believe again. Bridges of trust must be built. Old wounds need to heal.

Of course, I have read all these books. Catherine has read none. I’ve spent a lifetime in the pursuit of my own healing. Catherine has spent a lifetime in pursuit of hiding. A few days ago, before I found her with the help of an investigator, I had been a secret she planned to take to her grave.

What comes next should be this: Catherine should go away and I should continue with my life. The end.

“We can try to know each other,” she says. “Can’t we? I would be so sad not to know you.”

“You would?” I ask.

She nods and gives the impression of sincerity—to a point—but I also sense deep well of unexplored sorrow.

What to do?  What to do?

Something in me, something tiny and hungry for a mother, nods. I find that I am agreeing to know her, that I am agreeing to try.

She lights up, as if delighted. She laughs out loud. The sound fills the inside of my car and makes me think of my own daughter. My mother and my daughter have the same laugh.

We get out of the car and walk in silence, holding hands once again. As we approach the airport terminal, I feel shaky and scared. What have I agreed to?

“Saying goodbye is supposed to be the hardest part,” I hear myself say, quoting one of my adoption books. “If we are going to be in each others lives, you need to call me, in a few days. We’re also supposed to make a plan to see each other again. We are supposed to set a definite date.”

Catherine and I separate and go down the escalator. When we reach the bottom, she doesn’t try to hold my hand again. In the passage from the top of the stairs to the bottom, she has become someone in a hurry to get home.

She walks ahead of me, eyes trained on the glowing blue screen that displays the schedule for the departing flights. “Well, I can definitely call you although I’m not sure when,” Catherine says over her shoulder. “And I’m not sure when we can get together again either. I have a lot of things coming up with my own kids, things I’ve already scheduled months in advance—”

Catherine strides over to the security check point and digs into her purse for her ticket.

Dragging behind her, my hands get cold and I open and close them to bring back circulation.

“Okay, well, I guess I don’t need to know exactly when we can meet again,” I begin but she doesn’t seem to be listening as she gathers up her license and her boarding pass.

I feel waves of fear.  She’s leaving.  She’s leaving me again.

When we get to the front of the line, Catherine puts her arm around my shoulder.  She gives me a quick hug and a kiss on the cheek. It’s a peck, like we are strangers.

“Okay,” she says. “So I’ll call you when I get home. I’ll try to call tonight.”

“Okay,” I say. “But I feel like we might need to know, tentatively, when to meet again. Do you have any idea when you might be free?”

I feel so odd as I ask this question. It’s like asking a disinterested guy for a date.  I’m setting myself up to be rejected and here it comes.

She does this little shift from one foot to the other. She is restless. She sighs. “Well, not really,” she says. “Why don’t I figure that out when I get home.”

In my head, I tell myself that her reassurance should be enough. I want to believe we will form a plan later but my body knows the truth. Catherine left me before and she will leave me again and she is leaving me right now. If she truly meant to know me and be in my life, she would not behave this way. She would stand still. She would look me in the eye.

I hug myself and try, one more time, to bring her back to what is happening and what is needed.

“Are you sure?” I ask. “Will you figure it out? Will you remember?”

“Yes, yes, I will, I promise,” she says. She hugs me again but it’s an impatient embrace. She is eager to get on her way.

I step off to the side and let my mother go on without me.

Catherine weaves though the maze of security, shoulders back and hips slung forward. When she reaches the x-ray machines, she slips out of her high heel sandals.

My face is wet but I don’t wipe away the evidence of tears. I let myself cry and hug myself tighter still. Is this the fear, terror, grief and rage that I felt as a baby? The pain makes me dizzy. How did I survive?

Catherine forgot to ask:  How are you here, Jennifer? How did you make it without me?

She forgot to say she was so sorry for leaving me. That she would do anything to make it up to me—her first child—her daughter.

She rushes back to a full life of children, grandchildren—her big extended family.  I watch from here—as unknown to her as I was when she arrived this morning.

What happens next?

What happens next is that I get into my car and cry all the way home.

What happens next is that I put on my pajama’s, pour myself a very big glass of wine, pull my son and daughter under my arms and read silly stories that make the children—and me—laugh out loud.

What happens next is that I fall asleep next to my daughter—grateful to keep her close—grateful that I know every inch of her and will get to know my child for the rest of my life.

But first, what happens next is this moment: Catherine—exiting the x-ray machine and bending over to push her feet into her strappy sandals. In a final gesture, as if it is enough, she lifts her arm and waves goodbye.

She will land in Portland by eight a.m.

I am going to pick her up at the airport.

We get a day together—just this day. She has a sick cat, a job that needs her and appointments in her date book she cannot possibly reschedule.

Catherine is my mother and we have never met.

~

I stand in my closet and look at all my clothing—jeans, tops, sweaters, skirts. What to wear? What to wear? Should I choose a fancy combination that makes me look pretty or perhaps something professional that makes me appear credible? Perhaps I can pick an ensemble that says “Love me. Take me home with you. Don’t leave me again.”

~

Catherine and I have talked, several times, on the phone. We’ve exchanged emails with photos from her life—Christmas holidays, anniversaries, birthdays and graduations. In her pictures, I’ve seen aunts, uncles, a grandmother, and a brother and sister. My people. They all have the shape of my smile, the curve of my eyes, the size of my chin and the span of my forehead.

As I look at the life my mother has had without me, I tell myself this story: She had a decent life with family who loved her. That’s good. I’m happy for her.

Deep in me, though, pushed low and flat, is a seething rage that turns the contents of my stomach to toxic waste. To get by, I drink way too much wine late at night. Or, I get my bike out of the garage, pedal hard and sweat myself blind as if in training to complete in the Iron Man competition. Or, I press my children to my sides and read silly books like Captain Underpants and Bad Kitty. The latter is the only way to actually calm the fury. Warm bodies, sweet breath, steady hearts and the familiar sound of their laughter. They are whole and loved and kept children. Their proximity makes me whole and loved too—for a while.

~

Beige cords and a black cardigan. I pull myself together in these clothes because they are everyday attire. Comfortable. After I am dressed and ready, I make a top down survey in the full-length mirror. There I am—Jennifer Lauck. I have long dark hair, deep dark eyes, a narrow face and a slim form. My sweater is pilled and has a hole under the arm. My pants have a ripped pocket. I don’t care.

I don’t need to impress Catherine. Meeting her isn’t a contest or a job interview.

Over these forty-four years of life, I have been adopted twice. I have been homeless, ripped off and thrown away. I have been relocated twenty seven times. On my own, I have put myself through college, have been an investigative reporter and have written three books. I have met Oprah Winfrey and toured around the world. I’ve seen my work in languages I cannot read: Finnish, Dutch and Japanese. I have married twice and divorced twice. I have had two children—who are now seven and eleven. I have become a Buddhist; I have meditated in the high, thin air of the Rocky Mountains. I have taken spiritual teachings from His Holiness The Dalai Lama.

I have done so much and yet a part of me waits and has always been waiting. It’s as if I haven’t gathered enough speed to lift off the ground and truly take flight. I’ve been a bird without feathers but today, I get what all human beings are supposed to have—a mother—my mother.

Meeting my mother will serve just one purpose in my life.

~

In the main terminal of Portland International Airport, I am surrounded by a fast moving stream of travelers—arriving and departing.

I hold a bundle of roses cut from my back yard. They are the best of the year, the buds the size of extra large eggs. I’ve added sprigs of rosemary and lavender. The arrangement is wrapped in a white silk scarf.

This is a perfect demonstration of the kaleidoscope of conflicting emotion within.  I hate the mother who gave me away. I care enough to bring her the best from my garden.  It’s a miracle I am functioning at all.

At the inbound waiting area, I sit and wait.

I check the time on my cell phone and then I check the time on my watch. There is a five-minute difference between the watch and the phone. I readjust the time on the watch.

In-bound travelers fill the corridor, people with busy expressions and quick strides. A businesswoman pulls a wheelie travel bag and talks on the telephone. Another woman, with a baby in a stroller, goes by. Next is a teenager listening to his i-pod—jeans around his hips.

I shift to the edge of my seat.

Did she change her mind? Was her flight delayed?

I check my phone. No message.

A tall woman in high heels walks my way. She’s wavy in my field of vision, like a mirage in the desert.

I stand up.

The woman wears open toed strappy heels and slim fitting jeans. She has narrow hips, a lean body and wide shoulders she rolls back with the stance of a trained dancer.  She has high round cheekbones and her hair is a lovely shade of auburn.

“Jennifer?” she asks.

I nod. I think I nod.

We embrace but it’s not like a hug, it’s more like a magnetic slap against her body and on pure instinct, my arms go around her back, my chin digs into her collarbone and I inhale the smell of her almond perfume. A flood of primitive relief moves through me.  This is my mother. She is the one.

Catherine is more restrained. Her side of the embrace is brief and stiff. I’ve heard it is that way when the birth mother has been found—they feel exposed and embarrassed.  She has lived all my life in shame and secrecy.

She is the first to break away.

While I make a mental note to give her room, an arms length is all I can allow. I keep my hand on her shoulder and feel the shape of her bones and even the texture of her muscles and skin through the fabric of her silky blouse. My mother is utterly familiar—like a dream I’ve been having all my life.

I regress as if I am one of my own children when they are in proximity to my body.  I assume ownership of this stranger, my mother.

“My God, you are amazing,” I hear myself say. “Look at you.”

I take her in from the top of short auburn curls down to her toes painted a shining red. I touch her arms, to her elbows and wind my fingers into hers. “Do you play music?” I ask.

“No, no,” she laughs.

I touch her hips. I turn her right to left and then left to right. I go around her, full circle—one way and then the other. “Look at your fucking legs,” I say. “They are so incredibly long.”

She laughs out loud.

“Look at your fucking legs,” she says. She does this flashy gesture, opening her hands like a game show hostess.

I look at my own hands, which are just like hers and I see them in a new way. I have my mother’s hands.

“How tall are you?” she asks.

“Five nine.”

“I’m five ten,” she says.

She holds out her foot. “What size are your feet?” she asks.

“I’m a nine,” I say, kicking my foot out of my sandal.

“Me too,” she says.

We laugh as if our shoe size is hilarious.

~

I take Catherine to breakfast. A pancake and coffee place called Zells. We order the same thing, eggs on toast. While we eat, we talk fast. My words spill over hers and her words spill over mine. We are the same that way. We are talkers.

We drink cup after cup of coffee, reaching for the cream at the same time and then crack up when our hands collide.

We use our hands when we talk. We make windmill-sized gestures to get our points across. Our voices rise and then fall in the same vocal range.

When we have wiped our mouths with our napkins and our plates are cleared, Catherine reaches into her purse and takes out a photo. She places it on the table between us—as if relieved to unburden herself. “It’s the only photo I have of him,” she says. “It’s not very good.”

The photo of my father is on a large sheet of color copy paper and he wears a military uniform. He poses next to a cannon six times larger than he is. He looks like a child playing dress up in grown man’s clothes.

“I don’t know a lot. We were just kids. I know his mother was divorced. I don’t think they were close.”

Catherine searches over my head, as if more memory lives there. “Um, he came back to Reno not long after you were born—we kind of fell back in together, eloped when I got out of high school. I got pregnant on our honeymoon. After that, he was stationed in Germany. I had our son. It was a bad marriage. I missed my family. I left him in Germany and came back to Reno with the baby. I never saw him again. I wish I could tell you more. You know he’s dead now?”

“Yes,” I say, “I heard.”

Catherine shrugs her pretty shoulders.

I study the photo with more intensity. The man is out of focus to me. All I know of my father is that he became a house painter and he smoked. He died of emphysema in 2005.

Catherine reaches to tuck a loose strand behind my ear.

“I can’t get over being here, together,” she says. Her voice is different, soft and a little sad. “I’ve missed your whole life.”

She drops her hand into her lap. Did she touch me to begin with? Did I make it all up?

Sometimes, when I touch my own son in a casual way—running my hand over the shape of his head or rubbing his back—and then stop, he’ll take my hand and put it back on his body. It’s his way to say, “Keep touching me, Mom.”

I want to take Catherine’s hand and have her keep touching me but I don’t. I am too shy.

~

We leave the restaurant and go to a house that has been offered by a friend. The kitchen has been stocked with cheese, fruit, bread, chocolate, wine and teas.

Catherine and I spend our day on the back deck, surrounded by vines and passionflowers. We drink pots of tea and eat dark chocolate in the September sun. She likes dark chocolate as much as I do.

We perform an awkward dance of togetherness with steps we don’t know how to execute. If I were a baby, I’d be naked in her arms and she’d touch me everywhere.  She’d count my toes and press her face into my belly. But I’m a grown woman and neither of us knows how this is supposed to be. The threat of intimacy between us is overwhelming and intoxicating. She holds my hand for a long time and then, without warning, pulls back and crosses her arms over herself.  I lean into her, closing my eyes to take in the sound of her voice and then scoot away, a twist of queasiness in my stomach.

~

“Do you want to see my photos?” I ask. A thick manila file holds images that go back to infancy.

“I want to see everything,” she says.

I move swiftly through my life story, using each photo as a marker on the time line. I don’t linger on the losses or the pain or the loneliness. I tell myself Catherine doesn’t need to know, not now, not today. I want her to see the good things, the accomplishments and the success. I sit close to her while she looks at younger and still younger versions of me.

“This is me in high school,” I say. “Can you believe the size of my nose?”

“You have your father’s nose,” she says.

“Really?”

“It suits you,” she says. “I like it.”

I am down to three photos, all baby pictures. In one, my first adoptive mother Janet poses with me in front of our little ranch house on Mary Street in Carson City. I’m swaddled in blue and yellow and have a bonnet on my head. Janet wears a matching outfit with a big yellow hat tilted in a jaunty angle.

Catherine removes her glasses and looks at the picture as if trying to find a way to pass through and go back in time.

“She’s not holding you close enough,” Catherine finally says. “What’s wrong with her? I thought she was a mother already?”

I don’t answer because I don’t know how to tell her that nothing is wrong with Janet. It’s called being a stiff armed baby. I’m not letting Janet hold me closer because she’s not my mother. I am rejecting Janet.

Catherine looks up, ready for the next photo. It is another of Janet and me.

She makes another sound of disgust. “Why isn’t she holding you closer?”

Anger flashes in me like a lighting hit on a dry hot night.  I want to say, “Where were you? Why didn’t you come?”

But I don’t.

~

The sun arcs over the house and a squirrel leaps from branch to branch of an old maple tree.

My photos are fanned out on the patio table. She holds the three of me as a baby and studies each one for such a long time.

When Catherine finally speaks again, her voice is so low I have to lean closer still.

Read Part Two