Jennifer Lauck's Blog, page 29

Fresh Writing: What the He%& is Going On?

1) It's the final loop on the Mayan Calendar. Need more info? See this post explaining

2) Mercury Retrograde is coming

3) Full moon in Leo. LEO! Enough said.

4) Pluto squared Saturn (Lord of Karma and the Lord of Death) which is basically the four horsemen of the apocalypse condensed into two planetary positions.





If you are not noticing the tsunami of change in your own life, you are likely enlightened or a fundamentalist extremest. Notice the people around you going "postal" or on the brink of such erratic behavior? If not, watch out, it's coming. Even drivers are getting a little scary.

WIth that in mind, I do not have fresh writing but turn inside to a great story--the best life story I've read. Portia Nelson is concise and accurate. Read on:

Life in Five Short Chapters

CHAPTER 1

I walk down the street.
There's a deep hole in the sidewalk.
And I fall in.
I am lost. I am helpless. It isn't my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

CHAPTER 2

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don't see it. I fall in again.
I can't believe I am in the same place.
But it isn't my fault.
It takes a long time to get out.

CHAPTER 3

I walk down the same street and there is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it there, and still I fall in.
It's a habit.
But my eyes are open and I know where I am.
It is my fault and I get out immediately.

CHAPTER 4

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

CHAPTER 5

I walk down a different street.

Announcements: Audio Teaching Available

Want to write a memoir? Looking for some practical ideas on how? Can't afford a class, mentoring session, MFA program?

Well here you go! The Writing Life Audio is here for you!





· How to create the outline of your book.

· How to set a time line.

· How write your first draft in 90 days.

· How to write scene, summary and rumination.

· How to establish a daily writing practice.

· What are the secrets to becoming a writer who gets published

I also talk about memoir writing philosophy, the spirituality of writing and provides important definitions of this highly popular genre. Writing Life is a practical tool for writer's who are looking to get the writing job done.

Book Talk: Faraway Places by Tom Spanbauer

By Anne Gudger, a veteran teacher and memoirist who lives in Portland, Oregon

Faraway Places by Tom Spanbauer is a stunning little book. In only 124 pages Spanbauer probes sexuality, racism, and violence all set against the backdrop of farm life in Idaho in the 1950's. It's a coming-of-age novella where 13-year-old Jake's adolescent rebellion dovetails with him witnessing a brutal murder. The life Jake lived starts to unravel, then implodes and explodes, and in the end is blown to smithereens.

As a writer, I marvel at how Spanbauer waxes poetic without being sentimental and moves the action forward by giving the reader a peek view of what happens but also manages to withhold the entire story until the end. As a reader, I turned pages to find out what Jake saw, what Jake knows and who Jake is.

I am especially wowed by Spanbauer's attention to detail and how the small becomes huge. What Spanbauer does with sky is truly remarkable: "There was sky everywhere: outside the windows, under the beds, between the ceiling and the floor there was sky. There was sky between your fingers when you spread them, and sky under your arms when you lifted them up. Sky around your neck and ears and head, and sky pressing against your eyeballs. When you took a breath you were breathing sky. Sky was in your lungs. My mother hung up wash around the sky. I swung in my swing through the sky. There was no escaping it. The sky was as everywhere as the nuns at the St. Joseph's School said God was. Only the ground stopped it, and even then it didn't stop there."

Notice he doesn't just tell you the sky is blue or big. He evokes memories. He engages the senses. He starts with sky and ends up talking about God without saying "The sky reminded me of the nuns." As a writer you can use the same technique to immerse your reader in the environment and when you do, you can take them further and deeper into your story, into your memories.

Read Spanbauer's sky again and look out the window or go outside. I bet the sky will look different to you. Try the same thing in your own writing. Look for near and far away places to engage your writer senses. Spanbauer teaches us, by example, how to go beyond describing how something looks and into how it feels, smells, sounds, even tastes. These sense loaded details are where the gold is. That's where you'll win your readers' hearts and once you have our hearts, we'll follow you anywhere.

Count Down to Publication: 13 Days

Excerpted from SheWrites.com

Found has been shipped and emails come from fans: "Amazon is shipping." "IT JUST ARRIVED!" "I can't PUT IT DOWN." "I LOVE IT.

My book is not set for official release until March 1st but who are we kidding. The damn thing is out and I even went to my local book store, Powell's City of Books and found it on the front shelf with my name announcing the day I'll be doing my first ever reading at that store.

Publisher's Weekly has come out with a pretty great review, "...she shines when she allows the abandoned child to peek out. Lauck searches out her birth mother and finds her deceased birth father's family, completes the circle, then moves on. People who have struggled for a sense of belonging or with anger and grief will find wisdom, comfort, and guidance in Lauck's discoveries..." and the review by fans are going up on Amazon.

Last week, when Found arrived and I attached a small piece of paper to the cover that read: "1,000,000 copies sold in hardcover." The goal I wrote out and put on the cover wasn't just "wishful thinking" though, like dreaming about being an NFL football player or an astronaut. In fact, this is an acheivable goal and setting the goal, in a real and visible way, is an important part of the goal setting process.

Of all the things I have done in preparation for this book release, one of the most important has been "adjusting my attitude." I took an in-depth, nine week training from a young man in Portland, Oregon named Jacob Gudger who was just fresh from a Bob Proctor Goal Achiever's Seminar (of The Secret fame). Jake taught me how the conscious and the sub-conscious mind works. Much of what he was teaching me was in line with what I had been taught in the high thin air of the Rocky Mountains as I studied Tibetan Buddhism. Number one, I manifest everything is happening in my life—everything and this includes the good, the bad, the odd. It's all coming from me. Once I put Jake's teachings and my own common sense together, I got to work following his recommended formula of goal setting and then I maintained a Zen like focus on my goal which includes daily practices.

It's working.

A week after I set my first goals, I secured a book deal. Two weeks later, I was able to purchse the car I wanted (I know, it sound's silly but there you have it. I hated my old car and needed a different one). And many small and large victories later and here I am, with my book shipping around the U.S. And, I have set the next goal which is sell one million copies in hard cover. Three days after I set this most recent goal, I was given an unbelievable opportunity to write a controversial editorial for Huffington Post, which sparked intense interest and debate. I had know idea what the Huffington Post even was (I know, talk about the dark ages) and boom, now I'm on it! If that isn't the universe parting to show me the way, I don't know what is. Now I have written a second post and am being invited to write more. Not only do I get to write about a topic that is very important to my heart and spark important debate, my book is being exposed to an audience of 215 million people. That's the way to get the job done.

We are living in an extremely important time for writing and publishing. Yes, the dinosaur of New York is dying away and yes, the way we are selling books is changing but there is good news. I believe it's getting easier in some ways, due to the social networking opportunities. Pay attention to what is available out there, use the technology and see what happens. I have come up with a way to be home, with my kids, but reach thousands and this will be by offering myself to any book group that asks to host me. I will appear in any living room, across the country, via Skype. This will save in time, travel, money and physical wear and tear. I don't know if it will work but I'll willing to try and remain open to other opportunities. That is what it takes, as a writer and an artist. Be open. Be willing. Change your attitude. Learn. Grow. And sell those books!

Please come see me, live, in Portland, Seattle and the Bay Area. Look here on the site for details. I'm challenging all my fans to bring me jokes because I love to laugh! Best joke wins a free book!

Fresh Writing: Memoir & Time Travel

Happy Valentine's: This post is my "love letter" to all writers and of course, to my own writing students. Thank you for all you are teaching me.

When we write memoir, what we are actually doing is taking a journey—with story as our vehicle—into the lost, hidden and/or protected parts of our earlier "selves." IE: I'm going to tell you about my still born baby, An Exact Replica of a Figment of my Imagination by Elizabeth McCracken, or the nervous breakdown my mother had when I was little, The Liar's Club by Mary Karr, or the year I admitted myself to an mental institution, Girl Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen, or the years my father molested me and my sisters, Driving with Dead People by Monica Halloway.

Each of these writers, and I would suggest all memoirists, go on a mission into the shadows and indeed relive experiences of the past—it could be the recent past or the far distant past but no matter, unless you are writing about this moment NOW, you are writing about the past and that is a form of time travel.

Equipped with our computers, our courage, pots of tea or coffee and a few hours on the clock each day, we lower ourselves down into the past, sit ourselves down somewhere on the time line and start looking around with a flashlight, or a lamp or perhaps a hearty fire we've built at the hearth. We then pull out story telling tools and start describing what we see via written description. EG: what's in front of you, behind you, over your head, under your feet, what city are you in, what state, what country, what's going on with nature, what is moving around you (cars, people, butterflies), who are the other people in this place, what are they wearing, carrying, saying, suggesting, what are you wearing, carrying, feeling, tasting, touching, smelling, seeing and saying.

What comes next in our observation is the obvious response to what you are describing or remembering. EG: What the heck do you feel about all that's going on and what you do, as the observer of all that is going on feel about it now? What is surprising, amazing, stunning, remarkable, revelatory and inspiring? What is scary about what is going on? What is different that what you expected? What is important?

It all sounds simple enough, when written about in this way but memoir writing is hardly simple. In fact, it is one of the hardest things I know because a writer isn't going back and lowering herself into any old past and sitting on any old timeline with a flashlight, she is going back to her own past and her timeline and as a result reliving an event that was so hard, so heartbreaking, so frightening and/or so challenging, it had to be shut away into the shadows in order that she could carry on with her life.

On her journey back, a writer can forget that she is here, now, telling the story and be caught in the past like one is caught in a terrible dream. The brain, its messages wired into primal places of limbic region will send all manner of signals about how the body should respond because the brain doesn't know the difference between what has happened and what is happening. A writer will find herself crying, laughing, sweating, frozen with shock and even scared to death as if that rapist is at her back again and about to throw her down to the ground (Lucky by Alice Seabold).

Blink, stand up, shake your arms and your legs and take a walk around the block, but still the writer is likely shaken to the core by what she's relived in that dark place. As Mary Karr says of writing memoir: "it takes endurance."

What is most interesting to me in this process of writing about the past, especially about our childhood, is that we will also meet our selves as we were all those years ago. And when this happens, when we come to our former self face to face, we have a surprising, unexpected and glorious opportunity to be quiet and to listen. In fact, I would suggest that this "meeting" is ultimately the goal of what we are doing and the way to find voice in our memoir narrative. The part of ourselves, that lost part in many cases, I believe has been waiting for our return and is eager to reintegrate with the current self. I see this phenomenon a lot like one might think of a split hair.

Imagine, as life happens to us, at age three, four, seven, ten and so on, we have sharp, intense, scary, even life threatening events take place. At each of these junctures, the hair—that is the life energy—splits a little from the central core. A lifetime of these events leaves us with a heedful of split ends. In going back, interacting and learning from our past experience, we smooth the ends back into the central line and bring ourselves to wholeness in a way—gathering up the energy of those split off parts.

Here is where the work gets tricky. When a writer goes back in time, dropping into the past, she sometimes forgets that she is both part and separate from that person of the past. It is also very important to make note that the future person—that time traveling writer—is without the wisdom of that past part of herself and so the writer/future being/time traveler has to do some hard work in order to step down and let the person from the past have some room to speak in her native tongue. It's a bit like meeting an old friend in the coffee shop and catching up on how things are going.

The reason we split off from ourselves though is because it was too scary to stay and so when we left, we actually abandoned a part of ourselves and that self has a view that is very different than the one who got away.

[image error]An example I would supply is from my own writing in Blackbird where I went back on the timeline to my earliest memory or about five years of age. I dropped down on the time line and very quickly met little Jenny—age five—full of vitality, energy, story and sadness. My goodness could that child talk and I had forgotten that part of my lost self. Talk, talk, chat, chat, so much to say. Like most children. God love them.

Little Jenny, like a child would be, was also busy. She was nervous. She darted around and changed the subject quite a bit. Jenny of 1968 was like a moth that didn't want to be caught, all beating wings and dust. And I, in meeting this little one, was thirty-four years old with a baby napping for just two hours. I was, I hate to say, a taskmaster on a mission to "write a book, sell that book, earn a living and prove to my husband I'm was a dead beat." In short, I was not much for indulging little Jenny and her evasive ways. Once I found this remarkable little being, I wanted the girl to talk and talk NOW.

In response to my demands, Jenny didn't settle down. No. She just vanished. Poof. Child gone.

Intially, furious that I had found her and then lost her, I shrugged Jenny off. What did I care? I told myself, as a former reporter I was smart and knew how to tell a story. I didn't need her, I reasoned and preceded to write about my life (and my memory) as a detached, smart, know-it-all adult who was busy and full of herself.

My writing teacher (and all writers of this kind of craft need a teacher along the way) told me that I was very smart and knew how to tell a story but that was simply not good enough. "Get closer," he insisted. "Show me your heart."

That hurt.

My teacher was telling me that I had no heart and eventually I realized that my truest heart was in that chest of Jenny, that worried, frightened, wide eyed, busy little dear.

This was a brutal but important lesson. I could not bully my smaller self, not without becoming the very thing that Jenny feared the most—another untrustworthy adult. I had to become humble, deeply humble and offer my self as her servant. I brought Jenny what she craved—M&M's and my typewriter. She talked and I typed. That's how it worked.

Little Jenny spoke to me, oh yes, she spoke plenty, but it wasn't my on my terms, it was on hers.

She taught me what was important to a child, what was really important and this was a lesson that served me well in mothering my children too. For children really do have a magical perspective and a point of view that is often tossed to the side by the more cynical and jaded adult.

In paying attention to Jenny (and this took a good deal of time and re-learning and patience on my part) I discovered the power of present tense writing and heavy attention to detail and the senses. Children live in the moment, they are wrapped up in their senses of taste, touch, smell, sound and sight and they are entranced by the smallest details that most adults would barely notice.

If you don't know what children are like, because you don't have them or don't spend time with them, go watch kids. Go talk to them. Go ask them what is important and soon, they will tell you. A child's parents are very important, her room, her stuffed animals, her toys, her siblings and her favorite (and least favorite) foods. All very important.

In writing Blackbird from the voice of Jenny, I asked her questions and talked to her about what mattered. From my questions came the stories of cats winding around each other in the hallway, warm banana nut bread dripping with melted pats of butter, That Man cologne, snarling big brothers, wide warm shafts of sunlight over shag carpet and the fast slap of an embrace as I ran to greet my cousin Tracy in her big house.

I relived my past with Jenny as my guide and for eighteen months walked through the dark halls and deep losses and worrisome nights. When she cried, I cried. When she worried, I worried. When she asked questions, I asked questions. When she needed to rest, I rested. When she needed a cookie, I needed a cookie. And when she was done, I was done.

I gathered little Jenny up into my arms to took her forward in time so that she could live with me and continue to inform my life with her unique and important perspective.

So often I work with writers who are furious about their inability to capture the right "voice" in their story. I have worked with writers, for years, who cannot seem to nail down the sound of their story teller and it is always the case that this writer has not surrendered to herself at the age that the story took place. That is a shame. Many writers will actually attempt to abuse the child they want to learn about abuse from. They will be filled with fear and outrage and make demands and not listen as well as they should.

A writer is not serving her life energy in this way and she is not paying attention to what needs to be seen. This kind of writer is hungry for the meat of the story, in hopes she'll return with some great body of writing but in the process she is doing the same harm to herself that was done long ago. It's a kind crazy cannibalism.

I can only tell a writer this. Be careful with yourself when you are in that past. Speak the language of your former self. Listen closely and write down every damn detail that former part of your self offers up. Become the secretary. Only in the most humble of place, as the writer who nods and types and keeps her mouth sealed in the process, can we get the story we search for and nail the "voice."

I've often suggested writers even perform rituals with the former parts of themselves, taking themselves out to a meal or for a sundae or writing a letter. It's always good to get out photos of that former self, perhaps make a little alter to your former self that is close to where you write so you can look, with a revert and sacred eye, at your self as you were so long ago. It all helps

Memoir is simple task but also a complexity. It is time travel and it is voice driven. If you cannot find the voice, you cannot tell the tale in a way that holds any kind of real interest or attention.

When you cannot find your voice, you know it in your gut. It's this twisting, panicked feeling of "not rightness" and your words are stiff and whiny and hard to hear. Your teacher will tell you this, in more gentle terms, but she will (or should tell you) and that is the time for the writer to go back down into the past, once again, sit down on the time line and look with even more care.

Adoption Myth Buster: What Does it Take to Wake?

From Huffington Post


Earlier this week, I posted "Adoption versus Abduction" on HuffPost, and in no time, comments racked up from adoptees, fast to point out how satisfied they were with their adoptive parents and families. There were also adoptive parents on the board, eager to share their own feelings of contentment, calling adoption a gift and a blessing.

I once assumed my own adoption had been a gift and a blessing too. In fact, the term, "gift from God," was bandied about more than my own name. My adoptive mother, with a tumor growing in her spine, trusted that if she were truly meant to die, God wouldn't have given her a baby. For three years she had what some called a miraculous recovery and was able to leave her bed and walk intermittently. The tumor continued to grow however, and my adoptive mother suffered through many surgeries only to die when I was seven.

Analyzing the outcome with only a child's knowledge and ability to reason, I concluded the magic must have worn off and that surely I caused my adoptive mother's death. My father's death of a heart attack a mere eighteen months later sent me spinning. Many years later, my older brother (their natural child) ended his life with a single bullet to his brain due to depression; I became convinced I had doomed my family.

That's what magical thinking, the realm of children's minds, can do to a person. Magical thinking is black or white, good or bad, up or down. This way of thinking, a common consequence of surviving anything traumatic as a child, can grow to rule adolescent and adult thought patterns if not exposed and demystified.

Awakening began when I sat with my son at an eye specialist's office. My nine-year-old had neurological damage in his optic nerve and I had been sent to the specialist for further tests. The doctor asked a series of questions, one of which was had my son had a severe fall or a car accident? When I said no, the doctor asked about the circumstances of my son's birth and if we had ever been separated. In fact, yes was my answer, my son had been taken from me for most of four days. He was healthy, but hospital procedure for premature babies born earlier than 34 weeks' gestation required that he be, not in my arms bonding, but in intensive care for a battery of mandatory tests.

The specialist suggested I read up on infant separation trauma and the work of adoptive parent Dr. Nancy Verrier, who wrote on this phenomenon.

Verrier's work in Coming Home to Self, published in 2003, points to a study by Joseph Chilton Pearce, author of Magical Child and Evolutions End, who states that it takes less than forty-five minutes for an infant separated from his mother to go into shock.

Beyond Verrier's work, I found a study titled: Randomized controlled trial of skin-to-skin contact from birth versus conventional incubator for physiological stabilization in 1200- to 2199-gram newborns . This study showed that within six hours of separation from the mother, babies experienced "protest-despair" biology and "hyper-arousal and dissociation" response patterns. The conclusion of the Randomized Controlled Trial was: newborns should not be separated from their mothers.

Lamaze International states the benefits of keeping moms and babies together are so impressive that many professional organizations have made recommendations promoting skin-to-skin contact and rooming-in and opposing routine separation of mothers and babies to include the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine (ABM Protocol Committee, 2007); American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP Expert Workgroup on Breastfeeding, 2005); the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG Committee on Health Care for Underserved Women & Committee on Obstetric Practice, 2007); the Association of Women's Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses (2000); the World Health Organization (1998); and the International Lactation Consultant Association (1999).

Despite all this evidence, I couldn't budge from my conditioned magical thinking about my own adoption or apply what I was learning to myself. I could get my son treatment and restore his eyesight but I still held fast to the belief that my adoption had been good and that my adoptive family had simply been unlucky, likely because they adopted me and I had failed to be a good enough child.

Next I read the work of Bert Hellinger, a former Catholic priest who spent his life in study of the energy dynamics within family units. Hellinger wrote Love's Hidden Symmetry , published in 1998. In that book, Hellinger states that adoption with ill intent leads to consequences in the adoptive family such as divorce and death. "In its most destructive form," Hellinger writes, inappropriate adoption can lead to "illness and even suicide of the natural children."

Finally my magical thinking shifted and I saw the outcome of my adoption made me a statistic in the context of Hellinger's research.

The last barrier to the magical thinking I'd been using my whole adult life came when I met my original mother and my birth family. Finally my nervous system and my brain had recognizable genetic markers to latch onto. My mother smelled right, sounded right, looked right, was right! I discovered that an essential part of me had been waiting to make contact with my homeland -- the mother who had given me life. Basic biology.

Make no mistake, my reunion was no panacea for me or my original mother. The wounds of separation, 47 years deep, will take a lifetime to heal; but I am now fully aware that I was not the cause of my adoptive parents' death, and to take that awakening a step further, I began to accept that my adoption was not such a blessing after all. I could see my truth from other perspectives. If separation from original mothers has negative effects on babies, as it had on my own son, then it had, necessarily, a negative effect on me. I did not have to be happy about my adoption, nor did I have to feel thankful for it.

At this point in my journey, post awakening, I feel strongly that adoptive parents need to examine their deepest intention around the desire to adopt and then set the intention to be of true benefit to the child first. This examination isn't only for the adopted child, it is for the well being of the adoptive family and for all of the future generations of that family.

Those who place their children for adoption would do well to study into their own decisions too. If it is true a mother cannot keep and raise her own child or keep her within the family -- maternal or paternal -- what are the other options other than adoption?

And society must look at its role in this unregulated industry of baby trading. What parameters can we place on the "for profit" side of adoption? What interventions can be put into place to properly screen, educate and prepare adoptive parents? What information can be provided for birth families about their decision, in order that they think more deeply before parting with one of their own?

Perhaps what we are exploring here, in this discussion of adoption, is the deeper understanding and value of motherhood. In British Columbia, at a conference called the Vancouver Dialogues, Deepak Chopra asked His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama this question: "If we make motherhood the most sacred profession on our planet, is there a possibility for world peace?" The Dalai Lama responded, "Yes, that's very good." Applause silenced the discussion for several minutes.

Every human being on the planet comes through the womb of a mother. To force a mother to choose between keeping her offspring or losing acceptance by the culture is to force her to split in half and as a result, to collapse. Rather than divide mothers, can we keep women intact, empower them and thus empower children to feel whole, safe and content?

Examining our own minds for magical thinking, reflecting on our intentions to adopt, exploring all of the options before giving our children up for adoption, and especially, breaking open the mythology that adoption is the answer can be a beginning toward an important collective awakening.

Book Talk: Olive Kitteridge By Elizabeth Strout

Posted by Guest Anne Gudger



"I don't want the subtext of my writing to read, 'See how clever I am,'" was the declarative statement of Pulitzer Prize winning writer Elizabeth Strout who came to Portland to speak for Arts and Lectures two weeks ago. In the audience, I simply adored the way Strout sat with such poise and gave her straightforward advice for young writers: "Read. Write. Read. Write."
That is a good strategy for any writer.

Pultizer or not, I have to admit I hadn't read Strout but after hearing her speak, I knew I would.
I started Strout's novel, Olive Kitteridge the next day. Three cups of coffee later I was half way through. Strout doesn't have to worry about bad subtext. Her book, brilliantly written, is a collection of short stories that overlap to make a novel. Strout orbits 13 stories around the unforgettable Olive who is the primary planet in this system. Olive is bigger than life, full of opinions, stern, frightening, loving, insightful, oblivious. Set on the rocky shoreline of the small coastal town of Crosby, Maine, the reader is shocked when Olive rummages through her daughter-in-law's bedroom and steals a blue bra and one shoe. We're touched when Olive meets an anorexic young woman, bursts into tears and tells her, "You're breaking my heart. . . . I'm starving too. . . . We all are."

Olive is a wow. Olive Kitteridge is a wow book.

As a writer, what intrigues me most about this book is its structure. How Strout flushes out Olive, how she switches point of view by threading together short stories rather than weaving the characters into one big narrative novel. We trust the narrator to take us through town, to show us what's in people's heads and hearts, to pull back the curtain and let us see what happens to people when they grown up in rigid families where control is the family currency rather than love.

Strout shows us the complexities of being human. We're inside the story. We sip tea, munch donuts and worry about the young widow.

No distancing cleverness here. Just fabulous writing.

Abducted Versus Adopted: For 1.5 Million of U.S. Adoptees, What's the Difference?

Huffington Post Editorial- Living
Carlina White said she always had a sense she did not belong to the family that raised her. The twenty three year old woman had been abducted in 1987 from a Harlem Hospital when she was nineteen days old. White was then raised by her abductor, Ann Pettway. Pettway is now in custody for kidnapping.

What White expresses about her sense of belonging is what I have felt for all the years of my own life—only I am called adopted versus abducted.

I have to wonder, what is the difference in these terms, especially when I consider the circumstances of my own birth and subsequent relinquishment.

I was born December 15, 1963 at St. Mary's Hospital in Reno, Nevada. My mother, seventeen years old, was told she had no legal right to keep me. The Catholic agency who facilitated the adoption also told my mother that, with their help, a good family would raise me. The doctor who delivered me, told my mother she would not be a good mother and would not allow her to hold or even see me when I was born.

By today's view of birthing and mothering, it is considered inhumane to deny a woman even a glimpse of her own child but this severe method of dealing with young mothers was standard procedure in the 50's, 60's and even the 70's and stark evidence of this is provided in Ann Fessler's groundbreaking book The Girls Who Went Away . Those babies, forced from their mothers, are grown now and are learning—as I have—that it was illegal to take a child from a mother, no matter what her age.
And what of the promises made by the agencies who facilitated adoptions? In my own case, the Catholic agency placed me in the home of a terminally ill woman. My adoptive mother died when I was seven. My adoptive father died when I was nine. I was homeless and wandering the streets of L.A. by ten. A long investigation into my case revealed that the Catholic agency knew of my parentless circumstances, noting the deaths of both my adoptive parents in their files, but they did not inform my original mother.

And it turned out that my original mother became a very good mother despite the fact she was told such a reality would be impossible. She married my father when she was eighteen and they had a second child. She went on to have another child as well. Both of my mother's kept children grew to be successful, well-educated and productive adults.

Ms White has been reunited with her biological first mother. DNA tests this week confirm her as the daughter of Joy White and Carl Tyson and her case has made headline news in the US and internationally.

I have also been reunited with my mother and am confirmed to be her child but my story will never make headlines in the US or internationally because at this time in history, human beings have sanctioned adoption as a moral act and have given it legal and even religious support. Despite the fact that nearly 60% of American's are impacted, directly and indirectly, by the fall out of adoption and adoption policy, as shown in research by the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, we remain steeped in denial.

My mother has lived in a forced pocket of secrecy so deep she wasn't allowed to tell about me and so our reunion is complex. My mother has re-experienced the deep shame she felt as a young girl and the pain and loss of separation from relinquishing her first child—none of which she was allowed to talk about by the rules imposed by family and society. The only coping mechanism available to her has been denial. On my side, I have re-experienced feelings of abandonment, sorrow, fear, confusion and even anger—the natural fall out of separation from my mother. Together now, by sheer will on both our parts, we work together towards forgiveness and healing.

My mother and I are two of hundreds of thousands of separated mothers and children who struggle in near silence to regain dignity, identity and wholeness. There is no justice surrounding our story and even less recognition of the injustice done.


Jennifer Lauck is the author of Found: A Memoir, The True Sequel to Blackbird with Seal Press and her book video trailer can be seen on YouTube. She is also the author of the New York Times Bestseller Blackbird, Still Waters, Show Me the Way. She is a regular blogger on Prolifically Raw and Shewrites.com.

On Huffington Post Today

Abducted versus Adopted: For 1.5 Million of US Adoptees, What’s the Difference?

Carlina White said she always had a sense she did not belong to the family that raised her. The twenty three year old woman had been abducted in 1987 from a Harlem Hospital when she was nineteen days old. White was then raised by her abductor, Ann Pettway. Pettway is now in custody for kidnapping.

What White expresses about her sense of belonging is what I have felt for all the years of my own life—only I am called adopted versus abducted.

I have to wonder, what is the difference in these terms, especially when I consider the circumstances of my own birth and subsequent relinquishment.

I was born December 15, 1963 at St. Mary’s Hospital in Reno, Nevada. My mother, seventeen years old, was told she had no legal right to keep me. The Catholic agency who facilitated the adoption also told my mother that, with their help, a good family would raise me. The doctor who delivered me, told my mother she would not be a good mother and would not allow her to hold or even see me when I was born.

By today’s view of birthing and mothering, it is considered inhumane to deny a woman even a glimpse of her own child but this severe method of dealing with young mothers was standard procedure in the 50’s, 60’s and even the 70’s and stark evidence of this is provided in Ann Fessler’s groundbreaking book The Girls Who Went Away . Those babies, forced from their mothers, are grown now and are learning—as I have—that it was illegal to take a child from a mother, no matter what her age.

And what of the promises made by the agencies who facilitated adoptions? In my own case, the Catholic agency placed me in the home of a terminally ill woman. My adoptive mother died when I was seven. My adoptive father died when I was nine. I was homeless and wandering the streets of L.A. by ten. A long investigation into my case revealed that the Catholic agency knew of my parentless circumstances, noting the deaths of both my adoptive parents in their files, but they did not inform my original mother.

And it turned out that my original mother became a very good mother despite the fact she was told such a reality would be impossible. She married my father when she was eighteen and they had a second child. She went on to have another child as well. Both of my mother’s kept children grew to be successful, well-educated and productive adults.

Ms White has been reunited with her biological first mother. DNA tests this week confirm her as the daughter of Joy White and Carl Tyson and her case has made headline news in the US and internationally.

I have also been reunited with my mother and am confirmed to be her child but my story will never make headlines in the US or internationally because at this time in history, human beings have sanctioned adoption as a moral act and have given it legal and even religious support. Despite the fact that nearly 60% of American’s are impacted, directly and indirectly, by the fall out of adoption and adoption policy, as shown in research by the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, we remain steeped in denial.

My mother has lived in a forced pocket of secrecy so deep she wasn’t allowed to tell anyone about me and so our reunion is complex. My mother has re-experienced the deep shame she felt as a young girl and the pain and loss of separation from relinquishing her first child—none of which she was allowed to talk about by the rules imposed by family and society. The only coping mechanism available to her has been denial. On my side, I have re-experienced feelings of abandonment, sorrow, fear, confusion and even anger—the natural fall out of separation from my mother. Together now, by sheer will on both our parts, we work together towards forgiveness and healing.

My mother and I are two of hundreds of thousands of separated mothers and children who struggle in near silence to regain dignity, identity and wholeness. There is no justice surrounding our story and even less recognition of the injustice done.


Jennifer Lauck is the author of Found: A Memoir, The True Sequel to Blackbird with Seal Press and her book video trailer can be seen on YouTube. She is also the author of the New York Times Bestseller Blackbird, Still Waters, Show Me the Way. She is a regular blogger on Prolifically Raw and Shewrites.com.

Found: The Trailer