Our Guestblogger today is Marjorie Shaw an adoptee in a closed domestic adoption. This is the autobiography of her search for her lost self as an adoptee in a closed adoption. We are delighted that she has given us the opportunity to post her manuscript on our website. The manuscript will be segments on Monday and Friday.

© 2006 All rights reserved - Marjorie Shaw 

 CHAPTER TWENTY- SEVEN: The Artist (continued from here)

I saw from looking at her in the photo that I had her small bones and tiny long waist and fair complexion. We were tall, thin and small boned. I had to keep looking at the pictures over and over again to believe what I was seeing. We looked alike and I was finally seeing parts of my own tall, slender body and tiny waist on her. It was very strange at first. She even wore sneakers like I do and a red scarf tied around her neck just like the red scarves on the mini polar bears on my Christmas cards I designed for my agent. We had similar bone structure. Dorothy was an Aryan, and so was I. She was my mother for God’s sake! I certainly wasn’t English and didn’t have to pretend to be like my adoptive mother anymore. It all began to make perfect sense. This closed adoption practice of hiding the truth from me and the permanent separation from Dorothy was an abomination of nature and a terrible abuse of power by the closed adoption laws. There was indeed a natural genetic pull within me to Germans as well as to those similar to the ones I lost. We were all connected by a deeply embedded grand genetic design.

In a recent blog I explained why "Chanukah is not "Christmas with aTwist". I didn’t come up with the idea for that blog because I had nothing better to blog about. The fact is that many people don’t know differently and it is personally important for me to explain the differences between the two holidays.

Moving right along on this subject, I stayed at my daughter’s preschool this morning to talk to the children about Chanukah. I read to them from an excellent and beautifully illustrated book. Then my daughter Ella passed out dreidels and chocolate gelt (Yiddish word for money) to each of the children. Kids are so smart and their brains aren’t cluttered with garbage like us adults. They followed the story, asked intelligent questions, and were good listeners.

Drum roll please...................................................................................

Discussing sex with your child is not usually comfortable for the parent or the child. Older kids tend to laugh you off and tell you that they already know all about it, even if they do not know important facts. Discussing sex with a preteen seems premature after all; kids do not need that information in elementary school. We need to let them be kids for as long as possible. Unfortunately, that just is not true in the twenty-first century. By the first year in junior high school, 40 percent of adolescents may be having intercourse. This information is according to the (NHI) National Institute for Health. For most of them, their parents have not broached the subject of safe sex, condom use, relationships, and birth control. That makes their behaviors even more risky for STIs and unplanned pregnancies. The NHI is advising parents to begin open discussions with their children about sexual behavior between six and nine.

Tonight our family will light the first candle commemorating Chanukah. This is traditionally done at sundown. Here is a precise and simple description of Chanukah from

Wikipedia

:

Hanukkah... (also romanized as Chanukah), also known as the Festival of Lights, is an eight-day Jewish holiday commemorating the rededication of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem at the time of the Maccabean Revolt of the 2nd century BCE.

Hanukkah is observed for eight nights, starting on the 25th day of Kislev according to the Hebrew calendar, and may occur from late November to late December on the Gregorian calendar.

The festival is observed by the kindling of the lights of a special candelabrum, the nine-branched Menorah or Hanukiah, one additional light on each night of the holiday, progressing to eight on the final night. An extra light called a shamash (Hebrew: "guard" or "servant") is also lit each night for the purpose of lighting the others, and is given a distinct location, usually above or below the rest.