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The Abundant Womb
For all these reasons and more, I think that those of us who have mates and children and grandchildren ought to be as honest about the difficulties and demands of these relationships as we are eager to update our Facebook pages with brags and photos about this so-called great life we lead.
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Lost
We’d had heavy thunderstorms for several days, but the temperature had not dropped. When I took the dogs out first thing that morning, the air felt heavy, warm, and wet. Low-lying clouds hung over the woods in the distance, teats full of rain. Another storm was coming. As I waited on the dogs, a small…
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Father’s Day Redux
At our Father’s Day cookout yesterday, with four generations of our clan milling about, all our temperamental differences and likenesses were on parade. As adoptive parents, my husband and I never assumed that we’d be like our children temperamentally or vice-versa. In fact, the emotional distance we experienced with our own mothers prepared us to become better…
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Post Game
Though it’s taken a good two months to do it, I’m finished with Patricia’s case study; this post may be considered a sort of post-game wrap-up, a terminal staffing of Patricia’s case. Although Patricia is a composite, she is a reliable composite of real clients. I never worked with a surrendering birth mother who wasn’t devastated…
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Patricia: Part 7
Several weeks passed, but Liz didn’t hear from Patricia again. Troubled by the lack of contact, Liz tried calling Patricia. Her number had been disconnected. Finally, Liz called Jeanette Sizemore, the social worker who had first referred Patricia’s case to her. “Oh, yes,” Jeanette said, “Patricia had the baby and placed him with a wonderful…
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Patricia: Part 6
Liz thoughtfully sipped her tea and thought about the progress her client, Patricia, had made over the past few months. Before getting to know Patricia, she would probably never have believed that she would find in her such a willing and able client. Patricia’s gutsiness and her agile mind combined to make her very determined,…
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Patricia: Part 4
She was in a city of cobble-stoned streets and narrow, covered walkways that twisted and turned here and there. The air felt dense and cloying, and a low-lying thick fog permeated everything. Patricia was running and stumbling along the street, chasing a scrawny gray alarmed cat that seemed neither adult nor kitten, having the size…
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Patricia: Part 3
Irritation is like any other outburst of affect… anything that is emotive and disorients a person’s conscious condition. Thus another person or symbolic being can be a personified transmitter of unconscious contents that are seeking expression.
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Patricia: Part 2
Patricia was a 28-year-old single mother of two planning adoption for her unborn child, a son she said was conceived as the result of a date rape. After contacting an adoption agency and completing an intake interview with a social worker, she was referred to an independent counselor for pre-placement counseling.
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Patricia: Part 1
Patricia was a 28-year-old single mother who was pregnant with her third child as the result of a date rape that had occurred some six months before she contacted an adoption agency. Already juggling a full-time job and two young daughters, she felt that raising a third child would be beyond her abilities, and planned…
The Third Eve 