The Amazing Human Experience of Choice

As an adopted child, I've been extremely lucky on many, many fronts (that's my birth mother, Jeanine, with me in the photo at right). The one of which I am most conscious, however, is the awareness that adoption brings of the wondrous power that comes from choosing one's family.

Imagine the power of growing up in the early 1960s with your parents telling you they CHOSE you. Imagine the self esteem that creates; especially for a girl, who one day will have that choice herself. I believe that much of my sense that I can create anything in this world--including family--comes from being made aware, as a young child, that we are all, in some sense, chosen.

I think more children are raised this way today, in their birth as well as their adoptive families: because giving birth and having a family are at last, since 1972, more clearly about choice. I say "more" because I still know, both on my rural Maine island and the city in which I once lived, many teen age girls who don't feel as if they have a choice: who have babies at 15-16-17-18-19 because that's the only choice they feel they have, economically and culturally and ethically.

I've always felt so awed that someone -- my adoptive family -- chose me. Knowing that choice has allowed me to go into the world and create my own family. This big extended family--my lesbian partner and her children and grandchildren; my friends and former partners and their children; my adopted family, godparents, cousins, and their children; and most recently my birth mother, half siblings and their children--may not be traditional but it is a rich and diverse stew that feeds me to the extent I feed it. This is my family, and I am proud of it and honored and grateful to be a part of it. Thanks to all of you who allow me to consider you a part of this family.


I've only more recently become aware of the more difficult choices faced by my birth mother, thanks in part to an excellent book on the subject of these girls who, just after World War II during the "baby boom" years--which included a huge boom in babies "given up" for adoption--were confronted with increased sexual freedom and few ways to deal with the biological consequences of this freedom. This book, The Girls Who Went Away: the Hidden History of Women who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Years Before Roe v. Wade, prompted me, at 44 years of age, to seek out my birth mother. Getting to know Jeanine and her family has been another part of the wondrous ride of being a part of chosen family.


A lot of adoption stories aren't so happy, of course. (The photo to the left shows me in northern California last Sunday at my half brother Dale's house, with his family; my birth mother, Jeanine; and her husband of 35+ years, Don.) A lot of the women who had no choice about the fate of their bodies--women who were forced to have and to surrender their babies--did not fare as well as Jeanine; and the reunions between these children and their birth mothers, when they occur, don't bring the kind of love and joy mine has. Choice is one of the most fragile and amazing aspects of being human, and all too often we don't honor it, or attend to it. Choosing is an amazing and complicated act: each choice we make cuts in many directions.

In the context of having babies, the other side of "chosen" is "unwanted:" and children in that situation know their beginnings just as surely as I know mine. I'm not precious about the fact that I was born rather than aborted. When I talk about the critical role choice has played in my life, its power and importance, I'm not talking about being lucky because my mother chose to give birth to me (she actually didn't have other choices at that time): I'm talking about her choice to surrender me for adoption. I'm talking about the important power of each of us to choose life carefully and death equally: to not be afraid of death, but to choose it. To choose abortion where necessary; to choose to give birth; to choose our families from those we love, no matter their gender or color or genetic connection to us. The amazing human experience of choice.

"If you look deeply into the palm of your hand, you will see your parents and all generations of your ancestors. All of them are alive in this moment. Each is present in your body. You are the continuation of each of these people. To be born means that something which did not exist comes into existence. But the day we are born is not our beginning. It is a day of continuation. Since we are never born, how can we cease to be?" -- Thich Nhat Hanh, Present Moment, Wonderful Moment