A feel good story

This has been a long week for both Adam and I. After realizing that I needed a post for today I ran across this story on facebook. A mom who chose life for her daughter granted not in a way that anyone would prefer but she chose life.

Enjoy the story and have great Memorial Day Weekend.

Now for something completely different

During this process Adam & I have looked to you to donate money to our adoption fund and many of you have by buying Adam's Book. Thank you so much for that.

Last weekend I was reading a post in a Facebook group that I belong to where someone asked how do I increase my income. Many different viable options were offered and that is when it occurred to me that the best way to find work is to network.  Someone must know of jobs out there that I can apply for, or know of someone looking for employees.  All of the money that I make will go towards our adoption fund.  I'm applying for jobs right now and hoping to get something soon.  But if anyone knows of anything please let me know.

Adoption and The Oscars

Many of you may know in my spare time I also write a blog about movies called The Academy Award Project. The original goal was to see every film that had won best picture. Along the way I decided that some of these films were not that good and wondered how did they win? So I started to watch the films nominated for best picture and then would compare them against the film that won and then write about it on the blog. I have now seen all films that have won best picture and over four hundred of the nominated films to currently sit at 494 of 512.

Some of the films I have seen that were nominated have adoption as a main theme in them. Here are five that I have enjoyed and would recommend you watch them sometime if you haven't seen them already.

Blossoms In The Dust (1941) - Nominated for four awards including Best Art Direction (Color) which it won the Oscar, Best Picture, Best Cinematography and Best Actress the very talented and beautiful Greer Garson. Based on the life of Edna Gladney, although rather fictionalized, who was a board member of the Texas Children's Home and Aid Society. The film shows the negative stigma of adoption back at the turn of the 20th century and how she spends her life helping to find adoptive parents for orphans.

In real life in 1936 Edna Gladney got the Texas legislature to have the word illegitimate taken off birth certificates for adopted and abandoned children. Ten years after the film was made she helped get a bill passed that gave adopted children the same inheritance rights as biological children. Very few films are made showing adoption from the view of the agency working to place children, but this one is really done well.

Secrets & Lies (1996) - Nominated for five awards including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress and Best Original Screenplay. A young woman decides to find her birth mother after her adoptive mother passes away. She was born in the late 60's when adoptions were closed and even as an adult people try and talk her out of meeting her birth mother. She finds her birth mother and meets her biological family in a very intense drama.

This film is shown from the viewpoint of the adoptive child as well as the birth mother as they come to terms with ending a closed adoption as they try and form a relationship. And seeing how this film was nominated for all major awards is enough to prove that it is an exceptional movie and one you should see.

Juno (2007) - Nominated for four awards including Best Original Screenplay which it won an Oscar, Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actress. A teenage girl gets pregnant and while considering an abortion decides to carry the baby to term and seek out an adoptive parent. She finds a family that is looking for a child but agree to a closed adoption. The film then shows the rest of the pregnancy until the child is born.

Shown from the viewpoint of the birth mother but not so much from the adoptive family. It does a very good job at showing the emotional circumstances that a birth mother must go through from finding out she is pregnant to delivery. Very well acted and a simple film done well.

The Blind Side (2009) - Nominated for two awards including Best Actress which it won an Oscar for Sandra Bullock and for Best Picture. Based on the life of Michael Oher, tells the story of a teenager adopted by a wealthy family after spending years in foster homes. Because of his large physical size he plays football and while being recruited for collegiate teams runs into a problem with the NCAA accusing his adoptive family of only adopting him to go play football at their alumni. Currently Michael Oher is an offensive lineman with the Tennessee Titans.

This is shown from the adoptive child and the adoptive family viewpoints, but does show how adoption can happen even if the child is not an infant or very young. As well it shows that it is never too late to give a child love. A good enjoyable film to watch if you haven't seen it already.

Philomena (2013) - Nominated for four awards including Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Original Score. Based on the real life story of an Irish woman who held on to a secret for fifty years that she was pregnant as a young woman. Her father sent her to a Catholic Abbey where after she gave birth was forced to work for four years to pay off the cost for her stay. During that time the Abbey adopted her child to an American family and was taken to the United States without her approval. Her daughter tells this to a journalist who goes with her to America and help her find her child while he writes about her story.

Shown from the birth mother viewpoint of trying to find her child, this film once again shows that not very long ago adoption was considered a shameful thing. Hopefully in the future this will be considered an outdated philosophy that people will be confused why did it even happen. See this film when you can, it's a very powerful simple well done movie.

And make sure you check out The Academy Award Project to see what films I have seen and my rankings of them after I finish each year and decade. Soon to be expanded to Best Director!

O is for open

Christiana has been participating the A to Z challenge which challenges you to write a post about each letter of the alphabet for the month of April. If you take Sunday's off that gives you 26 days. Here is the entry for O. 

O is for open. Open is a interesting word since it can be used in some many ways

1. is the store open yet?
2. what time does the library open?
3. will there be an open bar at your party?
4. what is open adoption?

The last one is the one that I want to focus on right now. My husband and I are in the middle of an open adoption which according to Wikipedia is: Open adoption is a form of adoption in which the biological and adoptive families have access to varying degrees of each other's personal information and have an option of contact. That is a good definition and one that I would support.

I have to be honest and say that sometimes people who I speak to do not understand why we would want an open adoption. Here are some of the questions and my answers.

• Won't it cause problems in the future they ask?  Nope. It is up to you to make sure that it doesn't.
• Won't the birth parents end making decision for the child? Nope. The adoptive parents are the parents and they make all decisions.  If they wish the can consult the birth parents but it is up to the adoptive parents to make the final decision.
• How will the child know who real parents are? This is the one that bothers me the most: A child's real parents are the one who loves and takes care of the child. That to me is the definition of a parent.

For more information about our adoption click this FB page: https://www.facebook.com/mayeradoption

This post first appeared on the Magic Bag of Words blog: http://wp.me/p3hOqT-3K