Hardly a day goes by now that I don't come across one version or another of the general 'adoption sucks' mentality spewed by someone with a personal grudge against the very foundations of this already limited option for children. Narrow views that take in nothing beyond a tiny picture formed by one experience act like iron filings near a magnet and glom together in random forms that can never be anything but a ragged mess of individual negatives drawn toward an opposite positive as though to overwhelm.

Stick enough sharp little bits of negatively charged remnants together and some considerable weight can be created even though a usable shape will never result, and this is where no small amount of danger looms.

Kind, gentle people with their hearts on their sleeves buckle under the barrage of rancor and begin to self-mutilate, and as they implode from doubt, second-guessing of their own motives, ethics and morals, and the heavy burden of guilt that comes from happiness, they may feel compelled to manufacture and perpetuate their own negatives at the cost of the very positive aspects of themselves and their families.

How many adoptive parents blog their ever-growing angst, endless apologies, and a widening search for the hair shirt they can wear until the end of their days, rarely if ever expounding on the many plusses adoption has brought to them and to their children? Of course, this doesn't happen in a vacuum, and in addition to those lapping up the guilt like a kitten in clotted cream, others read and ponder their culpability and doubt their motives, their own family's happiness and the rightness of their love.

Some would have it that there is no such thing as a child without a hope of a safe and loved life finding one through adoption, and would suggest that every adoption is rooted in an evil of intentional making, as if the world was a fair and sympathetic place where every person had a shot at some of the good stuff instead of the corrupt and horrid planet it is where millions of children are tortured, murdered, starved, raped and worked to death daily.

Continued in the next post.