Waiting to Forget

Rating:
Summary: Forgetting to remember
Review: Ms. Moorman book is a brave one and I admire her for facing her pain and her past and how it affects her present. Her story is an American adoption story that shows we are still in the dark ages, full of wrenching heartache and misguided notions. The proof comes from Ms. Moorman's son who is described as "nice" but so worried about hurting his adoptive mother that he cannot agree to meet his birth mother at the age of 30! Think about that; here is a man who is not free and doesn't know he isn't free. Just as his birth mother didn't know the affects of losing him. This is deeply disturbing and goes to the heart of our problems with adoption...who owns this child? Is he, as an adult, still so worried about appearing ungrateful to his adoptive parents that he cannot see the mother who gave him life, and by doing so gave up so much of her own life. What message is he getting from his adoptive parents and the soicety at large that makes him act not in his own best interest? One message must be: there can only be one mother and it is the "good" mother and she must be the adoptive mother. Adoption makes these two mothers rivals. That this "boy" must turn his back on the mother who gave him life and also offers him love proves the failure of adoption. If we find it necessay to deny love and healing we are in the dark, no matter how "rational" the reason, no matter how much we tell ourselves we are right. Let's hope the story does not really end here. Let's hope we all wake up and face how adoption, as we practice it, shatters what we say we hold so dear: freedom and family and love.

Rating:
Summary: Forgetting to remember
Review: Ms. Moorman book is a brave one and I admire her for facing her pain and her past and how it affects her present. Her story is an American adoption story that shows we are still in the dark ages, full of wrenching heartache and misguided notions. The proof comes from Ms. Moorman's son who is described as "nice" but so worried about hurting his adoptive mother that he cannot agree to meet his birth mother at the age of 30! Think about that; here is a man who is not free and doesn't know he isn't free. Just as his birth mother didn't know the affects of losing him. This is deeply disturbing and goes to the heart of our problems with adoption...who owns this child? Is he, as an adult, still so worried about appearing ungrateful to his adoptive parents that he cannot see the mother who gave him life, and by doing so gave up so much of her own life. What message is he getting from his adoptive parents and the soicety at large that makes him act not in his own best interest? One message must be: there can only be one mother and it is the "good" mother and she must be the adoptive mother. Adoption makes these two mothers rivals. That this "boy" must turn his back on the mother who gave him life and also offers him love proves the failure of adoption. If we find it necessay to deny love and healing we are in the dark, no matter how "rational" the reason, no matter how much we tell ourselves we are right. Let's hope the story does not really end here. Let's hope we all wake up and face how adoption, as we practice it, shatters what we say we hold so dear: freedom and family and love.

Rating:
Summary: NEVER ALLOW ANYONE TO TELL YOU TO FORGET
Review: This book touched me deeply. I have lost 2 children to miscarriages. With my second lost, I was 4 1/2 months pregnant. The lost occured on my birthday in Feb 1998. I'll never forget how each pregnancy was different and how each baby had it's own distinction. I'm glad Margaret Moorman had finally found her son after 30 yrs of pain. Everyone has a past. But, The future is brighter.

Rating:
Summary: A big disappointment.
Review: WAITING TO FORGET is, sadly, a book that I can't wait to forget. I am sorry to have to say this about a book written by a sister birthmother. From the first chapter description of her "size 6 Villager dress" to the anticlimactic end where she is totally satisfied by a letter conveyed by the agency from her 30 year-old son saying he does not want to meet her, this author has one overriding theme--that she is different from and better than most other birthmothers.

She seems so intent on these differences--she did not search for a minor, she waited passively for the agency to make contact, she waited years to have another kid etc.--that she is unable to see what we all have in common; the loss of a child, and the hope of reunion. Although adequately written in a clear and occasionally descriptive journalistic style, the author's personality, heavily self-absorbed and self-righteous,comes through and leaves a sour taste behind. Although she began as a southern belle who knew when a party required white gloves, in her present life Margaret Moorman embodies all the qualities of the typical New York pseudo-intellectual who thinks the planets revolve around her personal sphere, and the civilized world ends at the Hudson River. It took her almost 30 years to begin to deal with the fact that like so many other young women of the 60's, she gave up a child. In this, her story is typical--most birthmothers begin in denial.And her story begins where they all do, with young love, betrayal, and the intervention of the adoption system. Then it founders and gets stuck, moving in self-restricted circles to an unsatisfying conclusion.

Her agency, which she calls Winnicott in the book, finally conveys a letter to her son, he replies in what sounds like a very ambivalent fashion, and the story just ends--after pages of build-up. As another birthmother-author said to me, "I kept waiting for her to get it--and she never quite did." It is easy to feel sorry for the author, and to hope she moves on as most women do once they get into a group, but it is hard to imagine why she choose to prematurely publish her writings on this subject ,which she could not resolve or really face. Those not able to move beyond denial any further than Ms. Moorman has, generally do not write a book about it. In some ways, her story reads as if a woman still in an abusive marriage were to write a book critical of battered women's groups, and how she could not identify with any of the other women in such groups, because they were not as "nice" as she, even though she had just as many black eyes and bruises, and just as brutal a spouse !

"Nice" is a very important word to Ms. Moorman--a whole section of her book is called "A Nice Girl Like Me", and she even kept her birthmother and search information in a file marked "Nice Girl". But "Margaret the Nice", who is so worried that nobody judge her, had no compunctions about trashing in print almost every adoptee and birthmother she came in contact with during her search. If this weren't bad enough, her book is a strange combination of real names for some adoption reform activists and groups, and pseudonyms for others ,that leaves one who knows anything about the adoption reform scene utterly confused. It seems ironic that when Ms. Moorman finally found another birthmother she could stand, it was someone who gave her "total acceptance." What a pity that the author could not reciprocate this acceptance to other birthmothers, and to the adoptees whose anger so offended her that she stopped attending adoptee meetings.

The tragedy of this story is that the author never stuck with any group or person long enough to work through anything. She condemned an entire group and its founder and members on the basis of just two meetings.Of this group she said, "I couldn't bring myself to go back to "Sam's". I hated his controlling ways, hated listening to the adoptees' complaints."Her comments on a booklet she requested from another group on telling other children about the surrendered child were "They have their nerve, I thought, as I read through the personal stories of half a dozen women, none of whom seemed at all like me. Most of them did not have children a quarter of a century younger than their firstborns, for one thing. ...(they)also wrote about doing things that made me cringe...at worst, it(minor search) gave me the creeps." Although she later gave this same booklet some faint praise, the damning first impression is what remains.

I am surprised that Ms. Moorman felt qualified to write a book in which she pronounced judgment on minor search, intermediaries, adoptee anger,groups and personalities, and many other subjects, with only the most cursory contact with either the people or the literature of adoption reform. While this book may have some merit as a sociological study of a certain kind of birthmother, and perhaps would be an aid to understanding for an adoptee who found one like her, I can see no other use for it, nor any reason for adoption reformers to promote or carry it.

On the cover of WAITING TO FORGET, it is decribed as "A Memoir."Like most memoirs of the obscure and uninteresting, it has little to say of concern to those beyond the author's immediate circle. The "birthmother memoir" has already been done well by Lorraine Dusky,who did a much better job with the pro-choice philosophy--both Lorraine and Margaret had wanted an abortion; and Carol Schaeffer, whose own story has achieved universal resonance by reflecting Carol's beautiful soul. Now it is time for more varied, expanded, and universal topics. Better to await upcoming books by Carol Schaeffer, Mirah Riben,Brenda Romanchik, and other birthmother activists and women of courage and committment, than to waste time or money on this one.

Rating:
Summary: Self-centered whine fest
Review: WAITING TO FORGET is, sadly, a book that I can't wait to forget. I am sorry to have to say this about a book written by a sister birthmother. From the first chapter description of her "size 6 Villager dress" to the anticlimactic end where she is totally satisfied by a letter conveyed by the agency from her 30 year-old son saying he does not want to meet her, this author has one overriding theme--that she is different from and better than most other birthmothers.

She seems so intent on these differences--she did not search for a minor, she waited passively for the agency to make contact, she waited years to have another kid etc.--that she is unable to see what we all have in common; the loss of a child, and the hope of reunion. Although adequately written in a clear and occasionally descriptive journalistic style, the author's personality, heavily self-absorbed and self-righteous,comes through and leaves a sour taste behind. Although she began as a southern belle who knew when a party required white gloves, in her present life Margaret Moorman embodies all the qualities of the typical New York pseudo-intellectual who thinks the planets revolve around her personal sphere, and the civilized world ends at the Hudson River. It took her almost 30 years to begin to deal with the fact that like so many other young women of the 60's, she gave up a child. In this, her story is typical--most birthmothers begin in denial.And her story begins where they all do, with young love, betrayal, and the intervention of the adoption system. Then it founders and gets stuck, moving in self-restricted circles to an unsatisfying conclusion.

Her agency, which she calls Winnicott in the book, finally conveys a letter to her son, he replies in what sounds like a very ambivalent fashion, and the story just ends--after pages of build-up. As another birthmother-author said to me, "I kept waiting for her to get it--and she never quite did." It is easy to feel sorry for the author, and to hope she moves on as most women do once they get into a group, but it is hard to imagine why she choose to prematurely publish her writings on this subject ,which she could not resolve or really face. Those not able to move beyond denial any further than Ms. Moorman has, generally do not write a book about it. In some ways, her story reads as if a woman still in an abusive marriage were to write a book critical of battered women's groups, and how she could not identify with any of the other women in such groups, because they were not as "nice" as she, even though she had just as many black eyes and bruises, and just as brutal a spouse !

"Nice" is a very important word to Ms. Moorman--a whole section of her book is called "A Nice Girl Like Me", and she even kept her birthmother and search information in a file marked "Nice Girl". But "Margaret the Nice", who is so worried that nobody judge her, had no compunctions about trashing in print almost every adoptee and birthmother she came in contact with during her search. If this weren't bad enough, her book is a strange combination of real names for some adoption reform activists and groups, and pseudonyms for others ,that leaves one who knows anything about the adoption reform scene utterly confused. It seems ironic that when Ms. Moorman finally found another birthmother she could stand, it was someone who gave her "total acceptance." What a pity that the author could not reciprocate this acceptance to other birthmothers, and to the adoptees whose anger so offended her that she stopped attending adoptee meetings.

The tragedy of this story is that the author never stuck with any group or person long enough to work through anything. She condemned an entire group and its founder and members on the basis of just two meetings.Of this group she said, "I couldn't bring myself to go back to "Sam's". I hated his controlling ways, hated listening to the adoptees' complaints."Her comments on a booklet she requested from another group on telling other children about the surrendered child were "They have their nerve, I thought, as I read through the personal stories of half a dozen women, none of whom seemed at all like me. Most of them did not have children a quarter of a century younger than their firstborns, for one thing. ...(they)also wrote about doing things that made me cringe...at worst, it(minor search) gave me the creeps." Although she later gave this same booklet some faint praise, the damning first impression is what remains.

I am surprised that Ms. Moorman felt qualified to write a book in which she pronounced judgment on minor search, intermediaries, adoptee anger,groups and personalities, and many other subjects, with only the most cursory contact with either the people or the literature of adoption reform. While this book may have some merit as a sociological study of a certain kind of birthmother, and perhaps would be an aid to understanding for an adoptee who found one like her, I can see no other use for it, nor any reason for adoption reformers to promote or carry it.

On the cover of WAITING TO FORGET, it is decribed as "A Memoir."Like most memoirs of the obscure and uninteresting, it has little to say of concern to those beyond the author's immediate circle. The "birthmother memoir" has already been done well by Lorraine Dusky,who did a much better job with the pro-choice philosophy--both Lorraine and Margaret had wanted an abortion; and Carol Schaeffer, whose own story has achieved universal resonance by reflecting Carol's beautiful soul. Now it is time for more varied, expanded, and universal topics. Better to await upcoming books by Carol Schaeffer, Mirah Riben,Brenda Romanchik, and other birthmother activists and women of courage and committment, than to waste time or money on this one.

Rating:
Summary: Waiting to Forget
Review: When I read this book, I wondered why one particular birthmother chose to write such a scathing review. Moorman does not appear to think she's better than other birthmothers--she was merely stating her experiences. The fact that she didn't want to join certain groups should not be a reason to "trash" her as well as her book. Nor should Moorman be judged that she seemed delighted just to get a nice letter from her son. As a birthmother, I could relate to that; maybe she was deliriously happy just to know he really existed. Maybe she's giving her son time to get used to the fact that she "found" him.

Birthmoms' experiences and situations frequently ARE different. For example, Moorman had no other children until she was almost past child-bearing age. I believe she did feel different because of that.

I think Moorman's book reflects the reliving of her painful journey toward contact with her son. The author concludes the book as she does because her psyche needs to absorb all that has happened to her, all that she has written about. Though I would like to know more about the long-term reactions of her son, it's scary for a birthmom to say much about a relationship that is so new, and possibly fragile. That may be another reason why Moorman concludes her book with the letter--and her reaction to it.

Rating:
Summary: Waiting to Forget
Review: When I read this book, I wondered why one particular birthmother chose to write such a scathing review. Moorman does not appear to think she's better than other birthmothers--she was merely stating her experiences. The fact that she didn't want to join certain groups should not be a reason to "trash" her as well as her book. Nor should Moorman be judged that she seemed delighted just to get a nice letter from her son. As a birthmother, I could relate to that; maybe she was deliriously happy just to know he really existed. Maybe she's giving her son time to get used to the fact that she "found" him.

Birthmoms' experiences and situations frequently ARE different. For example, Moorman had no other children until she was almost past child-bearing age. I believe she did feel different because of that.

I think Moorman's book reflects the reliving of her painful journey toward contact with her son. The author concludes the book as she does because her psyche needs to absorb all that has happened to her, all that she has written about. Though I would like to know more about the long-term reactions of her son, it's scary for a birthmom to say much about a relationship that is so new, and possibly fragile. That may be another reason why Moorman concludes her book with the letter--and her reaction to it.