The Mistress's Daughter

by A.M. Homes

This book is written by an adoptee with a bizarre story of her birthfamily and the discovery of the odd circumstances of her adoption.


NPR is running series of stories about adoption called "Adoption in America".

PAPs

I have had so many prospective adopted parents (PAPs) leave me comments. Most have wanted me to e-mail them about being an adoptee who also adopted. All of them who have been on the blogs are afraid of the anti-adopters. If they have a blog they don't want them to find out their address, they don't want to deal with the comments. Once they know the link it's like they can ascend live a pack of dogs. Before I had comment moderation and allowed anonymous posters - it was a little crazy so I get it. These couples just want to be happy. One girl wrote:

My husband and I are waiting to be matched and have a blog to record it all but I made the mistake of searching the blogs to find other couples who were waiting. There are some and they have been helpful but when I started to look at some of the adoptee blogs they were scary. These people scare me. We both have people in our families that are adopted and we had to ask them if they felt this way. Two were unaware that poelpe thought that way and my cousin said someone she knew, who blogs about her family, came across one or two and showed them to her. She was shocked at the mean things they say and especially that they think everyone feels the same.
I was so happy to come across your blog and see that there are adoptees that are happy out there in the blog world. Please send me link of more. I was blown over by the numbers of people that are adopted in the US and it really confirmed for us that most people who are adopted are OK.
If you wouldn't mind, could you please e-mail me at XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX so I could ask you some questions? I saw that you had comment moderation (we do too) please don't publish this so it won't link me or show my e-mail address. Looking forward to hearing from you.

I e-mailed her to ask if I could publish what she wrote without her info and she said yes.
This is why I am still here. I want people to know not all adoptees are unhappy.

Give me a break

The guy from Borrowed Notes writes about a comment I left in a post:

In the course of this exploration, the adoptee could feel angry and bitter about the losses incurred due to the practice of adoption. This type of reaction, in my opinion, is completely normal and - God forbid - healthy. What people like “petunia” need to do is not be so dismissive of these emotions, which are part of a process that most adoptees go through in order to reconcile their past and present lives.

Why do people do that? This is what I wrote:

There is a big difference with being curious about your origins and your biological family and letting the actual fact you are adopted turn you bitter and angry. I’m not trying to say all adoptees are happy people... there are enough biological children that are unhappy. But when an adoptee has not had the best life sometimes they like to blame adoption and they get pretty radical about how everyone should be against adoption. They say angry and mean things... THAT is a bitter angry adoptee. It has nothing to do with curiosity or wanting to change adoption practices so they are better and more ethical - I’m all for that.

That, to me is pretty plain. Bloodlines smoodlines......I don't get what that hang up is. These are strangers.....curiosity I can understand, but they are living in a fantasy of "what could have been". MOST adoptees do NOT go through these feelings....feelings of loss? Unless these people were abused or were adopted when a little older and have actual memories of their biological family they are kidding themselves....

I'm in a bad mood today...can you tell?

A Perfect Example How Adoption Can Work

My nephew was adopted from Russia. At one year old, when they all came off the plane, he weighed 11 pounds. I've never been so happy and so sad all at the same time. He was so sweet but a thin bag of bones - big eyes smiling up...not able to walk and not able to use his arms. In St. Petersburg it's cold....all the time and the babies are bundled all the time to keep them warm so they don't die. At the orphanage he was in they are not held much, there's not enough time...so these kids are literally bundled and in their cribs by themselves most of the time.

He was always fascinated with his toes - they were his only toys in the crib, if he could get his legs loose from the blanket. He held them up and wiggled them around - he even tried to hold his bottle with his feet. He only had watered down potato broth at the orphange and sometimes watered down milk and God knows what else...he was one and hadn't had any solid foods so that was a challenge. We knew at that point if he wouldn't have been brought here he would have died - when they were there the orphanage had asked my brother if they still wanted him....can you imagine? All they said was - "he's our son, we'll take him home".

Let me say at this point that his biological mother left him on the stairs at the orphange with a note. She had seven other children and no money or food....she loved him, she wanted to save his life....and she did.

By two it was presumed he had attachment disorder. The doctor's were pretty sure because of his neglect and lack of holding at the orphanage. He was treated for that until he was five when they changed his diagnosis to Asp*rger's . They had been doing all the wrongs things to treat him. He has some sociopath behavior from time to time that has worried us but for the most part he's just a kid with an IQ of about 195 who can't have a full conversation unless you talk about bugs. It's then he is in his world and really a wonder of information. I think he may be bi-polar now, i know he's starting puberty and that can make them go either way as far as behavior. He began to attack my brother, sister-in-law and niece. A few times they were on the highway - it was very dangerous. He has these outbursts of anger but you don't know when it's coming.

After $1800 worth of damage from an overflowed bathtub, $2,000 re-doing his room that he destroyed with urine, feces and his bare hands and $500 worth of damage to the newly landscaped yard (throwing things at windows to break them), he is in a children's home. He has structure, order and schooling. We all visit but it's just killing my sister-in-law and brother to have him there. I hope they can get him straightened out. They have tried a few times to bring him home but he just can't handle it - yet.

I went to see him Friday and we went into the community garden. He catches bees and wasps with a net and takes the stinger's out. He would open his hand and show me - 5-8 bumble bees all buzzing and wiggling around....it's quiet shocking if your not used to it. After so many years of handfuls of beetles and spiders I'm getting there. It's fascinating. He can tell you the name of everything, what they eat how they live, etc.

He brought over the largest wasp I've ever seen - He told me it was a Tarantula Hawk Wasp...a what? never heard of it. I got home and looked it up...it WAS what he said. It was amazing the gentleness and the expertise with which he handled these things. Most people run and scream and swat their hands and run away away from these things and he goes in wielding just a net and his bare hands. :o

I told him yesterday about the honey bee problem all over the US and all the trouble it's causing because they pollinate all the fruits and vegetables and without them we couldn't grow things. He looked at me and said, "i know what it is, i've seen a lot more Robber Flies last year and this year --a lot more - I bet it's the Robber Flies. They come down on the bees like a helecopter, grab them and inject poison into their heads to kill them". When I got home I looked it up:


Unlike most Flies, Robber Flies are neither pests, nor do They spread disease. Instead, Robber Flies eat Bees. They received their name from living around Honey Bee farms, and gobbling up the Bees when the Bees returned to their hives. Most Beekeepers regard Robber Flies as thieves.

Resembling a Wasp, Robber Fly is noted for voracious attacks on other Insects. Robber Fly waits in open sunlit areas where He can command a good view of passing Insects, then flies out to catch his prey. (The Fly's favorite food is small Bees and Wasps.) Once the prey is in his bristly legs, Robber Fly kills the unfortunate Insects with toxic saliva injected through his short proboscises.

What if the problem could be solved by listening to a twelve year old with Asp*rgers? This is a kid, that if we could get him "on track" could find new species, find cures for things, who knows....he could be a famous entomologist one day.

A kid who would have been dead or in an orphanage until he was kicked out at 18 into a cold world.

Everything is not all roses in his life but he is in a much better place than if he were to have stayed in Russia.

Thinking About Adoption?

Here are some rules...since we are making some up....
RULE #1 When Adopting:

Look through every agency in your area, ask around and find people who have adopted and what agency they used...where they happy with them? Was everything handled without complication?
Then get their literature, talk to someone there face to face, if you can, to get that first "gut instinct"....if you feel uncomfortable at this point - run away! Ask how they advertise, what happens when a girl/woman comes in, what kind of counciling they get. They should be able to pick a profile for themselves if they decide to place...and they should not do it until the last trimester. Is the agency small and able to take care of everyone? Also ask about your state's laws and the city the agency is in will have their own court proceedings.

HipHip....

There have been a few militant anti-adoption bloggers who have either went password protected or left the blogosphere.....YEA....that means they won't be there to scare any more prospective adopted parents (POPs) with their rantings. I don't mind when the blogs tell their stories, even if they are not all roses...but I can't stand the militant or mean ones where they misguide their anger onto everyone else.

Another one bit the dust this week. It used to be the POPs that got scared off (or turned off). Maybe these latest bloggers are just getting burned out or tired of being so angry...i'm sure it's exhausting!

There are a few mean angry anti-adopters out there....and a few bloggers started listing rules that people should go by in adoption...stating things as fact when they are not....it is irksome.

Here are some solid facts:

2% of the U.S. population, or 5-10-million Americans, are adoptees.

-Adoption Factbook, National Council For Adoption1-million children in the U.S. live with adoptive parents, and

2%-4% of American families include an adopted child.

-K.S. Stolley, 1993, in "Future of Children,"

Center for Future of Children, Los Altos, CA

Three very intersting findings from a study done in 1994 at the Search Institute, a Minneapolis-based public policy research organization

* Adopted adolescents generally are less depressed than children of single parents and less involved in alcohol abuse, vandalism, group fighting, police trouble, weapon use and theft.

* Adopted adolescents score higher than children of single parents on self-esteem, confidence in their own judgment, self-directedness, positive view of others and feelings of security within their families.

* Seven percent of children adopted in infancy repeated a grade, while 12 percent of children living with both biological parents repeated a grade.

I Need to Stop Reading other Blogs!

I do try to understand when biomoms are angry. They live with regret, the "what ifs" and the "whys". They let it simmer until they are angry. But sometimes they go over too many lines, calling people names, trying to fight to get rid of adoption all together because of how they feel about their own situation.

One biomom quoted the bible to "prove" that the bible speaks against adoption:
"The WICKED snatch fatherless children from their mother's breasts, and take a poor man's baby as a pledge before they will loan him any money or grain." Job 24:9

But she doesn't realize this has NOTHING to do with adoption. She used it out of context.
Job was talking about the oppressors that blame the "law" for what they do: "they pluck the fatherless from the breast";that's the oppressor having MADE the child fatheress by murdering the father. By killing the father they break the mother's heart, and so "starve the children" and leave them to perish. Pharaoh and Herod "plucked children from the breast to the sword"; and we read of "children brought forth to the murderers" Hosea 9:13

So I guess if we use things out of context we can prove the bible says anything.....

Just a Pop-In

Just peeked at a blog of an adoptee I barely read anymore because she is so venomous. I don't even want anyone to know who she is - I don't want any adopted parents to find her blog...it really gives adoptees a bad name. She has had a bad life as an adoptee and she %100 blames adoption. When I did read her blog, she claimed to have great adopted parents and she declared how much she loved them but was SO mad and SO stricken and hurt by adoption. But, if you read back on her past posts you see how her a-parents held adoption over her head all the time. They said things that would have absolutely had a impact on a kid.....I'm sure they were not terrible people, I'm sure they were nice .... but just like many bioparents....they messed with her head. You never want to think the people you love is the reason for our unhappiness.

My husbands father (wonderful man) thought he should not give his son a lot of praise because he didn't want him to get a "big head". Hubby now has a low self esteem and he never thinks things are good enough because his dad pushed him to always do better. He THOUGHT he was being a good parent but it impaired his son psychologically.

Many children have hang-ups and problems because of their parents. It just may be a problem for adoptees....it MAY not be the adoption but the aparents.

Again, I'm talking infant adoptions.

Memory and the Development of the Brain

The hippocampus is a "A peninsula-shaped structure in the middle of the brain that is crucial for learning as well as for consolidating long-term explicit memories."

•Research suggests that memory during infancy is dependent upon the hippocampus and that at a later age involves additional structures of the brain

In the cortical sensory systems, patterns of synaptic connectivity are formed postnatally. Before the emergence of behavioral function, the organization of synaptic contacts is influenced by sensory experience during a postnatal "sensitive period," resulting in permanent changes in connectivity and function.

Like the sensory cortices, the hippocampus undergoes a period of postnatal development, and behavioral function does not emerge until this period is complete. But, much of hippocampal synaptogenesis occurs postnatally.

It was thought that the hippocampus may "undergo a postnatal sensitive period, during which neuronal activity shows increased responsiveness to environmental stimulation". But after some studies with rats, the results "did not support this hypothesis, however, and instead suggest that, before the emergence of behavioral function, hippocampal cellular activity is insensitive to environmental stimulation."

•Research supports the notion of INFANTILE AMNESIA, the lack of memory for experiences that occurred prior to three years of age.

Infantile Amnesia: the inability to remember events from before around 3 ½ years of age

Two possible explanations:
1. Memories were never stored
2. Memories were stored but can’t be retrieved because of either
a. cognitive differences (e.g, language, time, etc.
b. social repression (e.g., freud

•Although memories are stored from early infancy, they cannot be easily retrieved.

•Early memories are susceptible to interference from later events.

Recent research on one of the body’s “stress-sensitive” systems shows how very stressful experiences also shape a child’s developing brain. When children are faced with physical or emotional stress or trauma, one of these systems “turns on” by releasing the hormone cortisol.

High levels of cortisol can cause brain cells to die and reduces the connections between the cells in certain areas of the brain.

Babies with strong, positive emotional bonds to their caregivers show consistently lower levels of cortisol in their brains. While positive experiences can help brighten a child’s future, negative experiences can do the opposite. Too much cortisol in the brain can make it hard for children to learn and to think. And they may have trouble acting appropriately in stressful situations.

Healthy relationships during the early years help children have healthy relationships throughout life. Deprived of a positive, stimulating environment, a child’s brain suffers. Rich experiences, in other words, really do produce rich brains.

•Memories are sensitive to environmental context

Early stimulation sets the stage for how children will learn and interact with others throughout life. A child’s experiences, good or bad, influence the wiring of his brain and the connection in his nervous system. Loving interactions with caring adults strongly stimulate a child’s brain, causing synapses to grow and existing connections to get stronger. Connections that are used become permanent. If a child receives little stimulation early on, the synapses will not develop, and the brain will make fewer connections.


***Recent advances in neuroscience have shown that early experiences also play a fundamental role in brain development. At birth, the human infant brain weighs approximately 350 grams but it more than quadruples its size by the time of adulthood. Most of the neurons that make up the human brain are present at the time of birth; the fourfold change in weight is due primarily to an increase in the connections between the neurons. These connections are established very rapidly during infancy and are contingent, at least in part, upon experience (Greenough, Black, & Wallace, 1987). Although both deprivation and enrichment influence the structure and function of the mammalian brain throughout the lifespan (Black & Greenough, 1998; Winocur, 1998), these experiences may be particularly important early in development when the brain is initially taking shape (Kolb, Forgie, Gibb, Gorny, & Rowntree, 1998; Perry, 1997; Wickelgren, 1999).

Still finding information...more to follow

What's So Puzzling?

nope










doesn't work












Okay, that's a match

Studying more about memory I have been interested in all memory function. Of course you will find many things on the internet supporting any idea that you support. However, the best thing to do is seek educated studies done by reputable establishments.

More about Memory

Over the years, many multiple memory systems have been proposed. The most widely accepted today are nondeclarative/declarative memory, semantic/episodic memory, and implicit/explicit memory.

Declarative memory stores facts and can be consciously discussed.
Semantic memory is memory of meanings and concept based understanding
Episotic memory is the memory of events, times and places
Explicit memory is exact memories like "what you had for breakfast"
Implicit memory is "memory that can't be verbalized but that can affect performance on some task without conscious awareness. For example, sometimes you can recognize a multiple choice answer without ever realizing you learned the information in the first place. Eich, Macaulay, Loewenstein, and Dihle (1997)

Don't forget, there are also "false memories" that can be mistaken for real memory and the person honestly thinks they really have been through things that never happened.

More info at Brainconnection.com -- One of the interesting ideas is that infants do not have the ability to process language so they can have no connections to make memories.
It suggests that emotional memories may be easier to recall but they are speaking about 1 and 5 year olds.

Holy Smokes - Tom Cruise is weirder than I thoughtIt began with Victoria Beckham on Jay Leno. I started to think about she and David being friends with Tom Cruise and his wife. I looked up "Beckham scientology" and saw a clip from an article about Tom making a movie about his "bizarre" religious beliefs and he wants Victoria to play "Thetan". Then I had to look that up and WHOA...it got weird. I knew it was a bizarre system of beliefs and I know Ron Hubbard was a failed Science fiction writer who decided to start his own religion....but HOW ON GOD'S GREEN EARTH DO PEOPLE FALL FOR THIS????

Maybe it's all about prestige, being part of the "club"...I can't imagine intelligent people believing this. These are the same people who can't believe in Jesus? That's too far fetched? That's easy math compaired to believing we all have an alien living in our brains: Thetan is a " non-human, but not superhuman, parasitic intelligence that can infest the brains of human beings".

WOOOHHOOOOO, these headaches must be that pseky Thetan trying to get out (like on the Alien movie)

People have a Hard Time Believing

It's difficult for people to believe in a "divine plan", that everything happens for a reason or even that God can use things that are bad and use them for good. After all, most people say "It's God, He could just fix it and not let bad things happen".
I wrote this in a comment to another blogger and, as you can imagine, it was not well received by some other commenters.

"I believe we are all meant to be exactly where we are now. I guess it’s my Christian background that brings me to where I am but I believe that yes, there are people who are meant to carry a child and not raise that child…as hard as it is. There are people who will get cancer, there are people who will live with a child’s death and there are people who will have their own fights to fight. I was definitely meant to be with who I am with and my biomom has made a life for herself in spite of what happened to her…she would have never been in the great place she is now without “giving me up”. I pray that my daughter’s biomom will go to college now and get a good job and stay with the biodad etc…
There is a thread (maybe it’s not red, maybe it’s not even a thread) that binds us…I am better for knowing her biomom and my own, we are all connected by something…I believe it’s all a "God thing". I have lived with adoption my whole life so this isn’t a naive, new mom thing.
Consider the amounts of people who have been adopted and the small percentage of the blogs on the internet and you will realize there are most likely more positive stories out there than negative."

I know there are people that will scoff at the idea of "everything happens for a reason" but it's something that gets people through difficult times. If someone want to look up Corrie ten Boom, she wrote a book about her time in a concentration camp called "the Hiding Place". In it she tells her sister to thank God for the fleas in their beds...when her sister questions that she tells her her that the bible says to be thankful for EVERYTHING, not just some things. The fleas are what kept the gaurds from coming into their bunker....there is a reason for even bad things.

Rabbi Simmons has a great explanation about "Why bad things happen to good people". I know people just don't want to accept that God can let people suffer in any way but I guess we won't know all the answers until we can ask Him for ourselves.

Trying to Understand it All

I have been trying to understand the adoptees that say they miss their biological mothers. I am not saying anyone is lying or making things up...I really want to understand.

In a comment Heather UK wrote:

My friend's mother died in childbirth. She misses her terribly. Are you really saying that someone who lost their mother very young, whether by death or by adoption should have no ill-effects as a result because she can't remember?

Isn't it the thought of her mother and the regret of not getting to know her?

I liken it to when a child says they remember an event at two years old but it's really that they have seen pictures and people have talked so much about it that they actually think they remember it. If this child would have never been told about the mother that had died during childbirth would there be a longing?

It's not wrong to have regret and miss the opportunity to get to know someone but maybe that's why some adoptees have more feelings for their birthparents.... maybe that's why, like myself, there are so many with no real feelings for their biological families other than what you would feel for an acquaintance. We never really talked about me being adopted or my biomom. I didn't have pictures to see or stories to hear. I never knew anyone to miss.

It's sad this girl's mother died and she didn't get so see her daughter grow up.

Adoption Video

Came across this video preview for a movie:

I Have Roots & Branches... Personal Reflections on Adoption

In this must-see film, a 2004 winner of a Film Advisory Board Award of Excellence(recognized world-wide) for quality family/children's entertainment, adoptees ranging in age from childhood to adulthood share their deepest thoughts and emotions on the adoption experience which has profoundly shaped their lives and those of their loved ones. Viewers will find out first hand how it feels to have been adopted and discover that all kids have common experiences growing up in their homes, surrounded by the families they know and love. Children will understand that if they were adopted, it is a lifelong journey; a celebration of the roots from which they come and the branches that mold them into who they are and where they will go. The roots & the branches.....the tree......it is their legacy- two different kinds of love. This joyous and uplifting film rings true to the celebration of their legacy

VALIDATION: an act, process, or instance of validating; especially : the determination of the degree of validity of a measuring device

val·i·date (vl-dt)tr.v. val·i·dat·ed, val·i·dat·ing, val·i·dates

1. To declare or make legally valid.

2. To mark with an indication of official sanction.

3. To establish the soundness of; corroborate

validation - the cognitive process of establishing a valid proof

In psychology and human communication, validation is "the communication of respect for a communication partner, which involves the acknowledgment that the other's opinions are legitimate."

Validation has been thrown around a lot in the adoptee community...as you can see by the actual definition, validation is a declaration of something or someone being real, or what and who they say they are. So when psychologists who tell people they did not get enough "validation", are really saying that the people that are around them don't make them feel real. Hmmmm, now we are getting somewhere.

When an infant is adopted there is no memory of the birthmother or the foster parents who had that child for the first 3-6 weeks. People who try to say they have a loss are in a fantasy of what their lives would have been like if they had not been adopted. Maybe their parents did not "validate" them, did not give them what they needed---but that would have happen with biological children as well. Why do people try to blame adoption? I really think the only adoptees who need to be complaining are the ones that were in foster care or international adoptees that lived in orphanages. These kids could have some problems due to their relinquishment. I just don't believe that infant adoptions can cause the problems that the anti-adoption crowd is talking about. When was the trauma done? Memory does not go that far back...as much as they would like to believe all their problems came from being adopted, their must be some other reasons. look at your adopted family....did they have other children? Did they have troubles too? If they don't feel "validated" it must be because the people around them did not "validate" their existence.

If the loss is a medical history or heritage that can be found out.... but to say that infant adoption has psychologically damaged you is wrong....look at your childhood for that.

Who NOSE?

I have a disorder of my chemical senses.....the book says:

the system may misread and or distort an odor, a taste, or a flavor. Or a person may detect a foul taste from a substance that is normally pleasant tasting.

Well, that's what's happening...long story short, I have Phantosmia. Asnomia is the loss of taste and smell and I had that for a month. Phantosmia is when you smell and taste distorts and you smell and taste incredibly foul things. I can't stand coffee, chocolate, my baby's soap, milk, and just about anything that's not sour or just sweet (like a snow cone). I smell coffee, perfume, cleaning chemicals and rubbing alcohol as a putrid, acidic stench that makes me gag. Milk tastes sour (but worse) and I bit into an ice cream cone and spit it on my desk....it tasted like I was eating rotten meat.

This could be from an infection that has affected my olfactory nerves (i suspect that's what my problem is). But it could also be a brain tumor, a sinus polyp, gingivitis, diabetes or the results of a head injury.

I think this has been coming on for a long time...it's why I'm worried it could be a slow growing tumor. I used to love the smell of buttered popcorn (more than the taste) but for the last few years I couldn't stand the smell...it was like smelly old deli meat. And other smells have changed over the course of 2 or 3 years....things that I used to like were different but I thought it was just getting older. But now it has kicked in to high gear. You cannot imagine what it's like to have so many nasty smells everywhere you go. Even smells I liked just a few months ago are horrible or changed......like my sweet baby's bath wash...it smelled like old trash tonight when I gave her a bath....I cried.
As far as coffee goes, you can't believe how many people drink it, sell it or make it.

BLeeeeeeecccccccck

I will get a CT scan next week...... but in the meantime could everyone in the midwest stop drinking coffee? It would really help a lot...

The Prisoner

One of my favorite Biomoms wrote this about feeling the way biomoms do:

From Healing The Shame That Binds You.. John Bradshaw.. page 115

To heal our toxic shame we must come out of hiding. As long as our shame is hidden, there is nothing we can do about it. In order to change our toxic shame we must embrace it. There is an old therapeutic adage which states, “The only way out is through.”

Embracing our shame involves pain. Pain is what we try to avoid. In fact, most of our neurotic behavior is due to the avoidance of legitimate pain. We try to find an easier way. This is perfectly reasonable. However, as Scott Peck has said, “The tendency to avoid emotional suffering…… is the primary basis for all mental illness.”

In the case of shame, the more we avoid it, the worse it gets. We cannot change our “internalized” shame until we “externalize” it.

page 117

A Parable:

The Prisoner In The Dark Cave

There once was a man who was sentenced to die. He was blindfolded and put in a pitch dark cave. The cave was 100 yards by 100 yards. He was told that there was a way out of the cave, and if he could find it, he was a free man.

After a rock was secured at the entrance to the cave, the prisoner was allowed to take his blindfold off and roam freely in the darkness. He was to be fed only bread and water for the first 30 days and nothing thereafter. The bread and water were lowered from a small hole in the roof at the south end of the cave. The ceiling was about 18 feet high. The opening was about one foot in diameter. The prisoner could see a faint light up above, but no light came into the cave.

As the prisoner roamed and crawled around the cave, he bumped into rocks. Some were rather large. He thought if he could build a mound of rocks and dirt that was high enough, he could reach the opening and enlarge it enough to crawl through and escape. Since he was 5’9”, and his reach was another two feet, the mound had to be at least 10 feet high..

So the prisoner spent his waking hours picking up rocks and digging up dirt. At the end of two weeks, he had built a mound of about six feet. He thought that if he could duplicate that in the next two weeks, he could make it before the food ran out. But as he had already used most of the rocks in the cave, he had to dig harder and harder. He had to do the digging with his bare hands. After a month had passed, the mound was 9 ½ feet high and he could almost reach the opening if he jumped. He was almost exhausted and extremely weak.

One day just as he thought he could touch the opening, he fell. He was simply too weak to get up, and in two days he died. His captors came to get his body. They rolled away the huge rock that covered the entrance. As the light flooded into the cave, it illuminated an opening in the wall of the cave about three feet in circumference.

The opening was the opening to a tunnel which led to the other side of the mountain. This was the passage to freedom the prisoner had been told about. It was in the south wall directly under the opening in the ceiling. All the prisoner would have had to do was crawl about 200 feet and he would have found freedom. He had so completely focused on the opening of light that it never occurred to him to look for freedom in the darkness. Liberation was there all the time right next to the mound he was building, but it was in the darkness..

Oh Baby

Today there were some birds chirping in my building. One of the guys was going nuts because it was so loud. I walked over and the chirping stopped. I stood very still until I heard it again, moved and listened...I finally found two birds behind a propped open door. It was two sparrows, a momma and her baby. The mother was chirping for help, to ward off predators or was crying for her baby...you pick one. As soon as I tried to get them, the mother flew away leaving her young behind....it's all she could do. My assistant cupped the baby in her hands and I got a box with some holes in it. I had to wave my arms around and herd the momma bird back to the boiler room where her nest is and where the hole in the wall lets the birds in and out.

We have a wild bird sanctuary that's close so I drove the baby over and was overwhelmed by a feeling of.....not sadness really, but....wonder maybe?....solidarity?....irony? I'm not sure.

I thought how the mother tried desperately to take care of her baby but was unable to in the end. Someone was taking that baby to make sure it did well and prospered. When I got to the sanctuary they were so kind and treated that baby so well...trying to feed it and wanting so much to take care of it . They knew what to do, they had the experience, the know-how, the food, etc. A woman came out and said they would "match her up with someone good"...It was sweet but so surreal.Reading this back it doesn't hit me like it did this morning....

I haven't even read this blog yet but I loved this first post. I don't know where she stands on adoption but it doesn't matter....we all have felt this way:

Bear-Hug Me

I read about how you touched them and they were healed.

Or even if someone just touched your cloak they were forever changed.

You let a broken women bathe your feet in her tears,

And you washed your best friend’s feet.

I am just wondering though did you just ever hug people?

I mean I know that it is a silly question and all I am sure you would have why wouldn’t you?

But its one of those things that was never mentioned that got me thinking about it...

And how whenever there was a touch from you sins were forgiven and sickness fell

I think I’m caught up in my sins.

Last time I checked all my body parts were properly working, nothing special here...

I am just a kid with a heavy heart these passing sunrises and sunsets

I don’t think our encounter would have ended up in the gospels or anything...

Because all I really need is a hug

That is ok for me to imagine right?

That’s not going to be conflicting with any sort of theology is it?

Ok good, then hug me...

But not one of these side ways one arm around the neck type hugs

Or the ghetto right hand clasp fists elbows to chest pit pat on the back back

Or you put your right arm over my right arm and I put my left arm over your left arm and we make this weird sort of diagonal thing

Nah none of those...

BEAR HUG ME MAN!

Take your old school carpenter arms and throw them over my upper body leaving my arms dangling underneath yours somewhere and I can barely move them because your squeezing so hard...

But don’t pick me up and make my back pop because I hate it when people do that.

And hold me, hold me here in your arms until I start to cry because
I WANT TO CRY

But I just can’t seem to do it on my own

I have been teary eyed once recently but not even enough for a drip down my cheek

Theres just hurt in my soul that needs to be purged so hold me in this hold pose until the pain is flowing from my eyes and nose...

Makes you want to find this person and hug them - hard!

Strange follow up---The thing is - Arabs don't really hug....woman kiss on each cheek as they hold the arms of the other woman. Men take the other man's hand and pull them to them to hit shoulders or kiss on the cheek if they are close friends. And of course a man would not even think of touching a woman unless they are their mother or sister and even then there's not that much contact anyway. I think they need more hugging in the middle east. Maybe that's the way to win any war.