April 2011 ~ To Tell The Truth

Friday, April 29, 2011

Making New/Old Traditions I Go Along

Right around the time LT was in her friend’s basement, trying not to infringe on their traditional family Easter, and writing her post: what you miss growing up as an un-adopted foster kid, I Ironically I had a ham in the oven. I was boiling the noodles for baked mac and cheese, throwing some fat-back into a pot of greens and cutting potatoes for some country style green beans. For the first time in my adult life I was having a traditional Easter celebration, at my house for my kids and my family. Before everything fell apart, the Christian holidays including Easter were a very big and important part of my childhood and our family traditions....

It’s Raining, It’s Pouring

The old man is snoring He went to bed And bumped his head And he couldn’t get up in the morning Somehow, even as a very little kid, I assumed that the old man had been drinking and bumping his was just an excuse to sleep it off. I wonder what that says about me. My girls are having a great time “saving” frogs today. You know from the pond and swamp that they naturally live in, by moving them to the plastic sand box. Feel free to make your own analogies/comparisons if you’d like. We have been clear that once they are done “rescuing” the frogs that they have to be returned to where they found them. Wild things deserve...

Foster children would be allowed to get clothing only from second hand stores | Michigan Messenger

I am honestly so angry right now I am not able to come up with anything coherent and not profanity laden to say right now. Under a new budget proposal from State Sen. Bruce Caswell, children in the state’s foster care system would be allowed to purchase clothing only in used clothing stores. Caswell, a Republican representing Branch, Hillsdale, Lenawee and St. Joseph counties, made the proposal this week, reports Michigan Public Radio. His explanation? “I never had anything new,” Caswell says. “I got all the hand-me-downs. And my dad, he did a lot of shopping at the Salvation Army, and his comment was — and quite frankly it’s true — once you’re out of the store and you walk down the street, nobody knows where you bought your clothes.” Under his plan, foster...

White Mothers / Black Hair

This is a fantastic post where a transracial / international adoptive parent takes a serious, heartfelt look at the never to be underestimated issue of HAIR of color. I love what she has to say and the way she says it. I think it all boils down to respect, of the child, the culture around her, his heritage and of her job to attempt to teach him something that she doesn’t know herself – how to be black in America. There are lots of interesting comments to read too. As a preteen and teen a regular part of my Saturday morning was the smell of sizzling hair grease and singed hair wafting through the house, floor, building from the hot comb...

Today, I Start My Old Koffron Family Traditions Anew

We did something we have never done in my house before. That’s right, we colored Easter eggs. The two little ones were so excited. This one was not so sure…. She was hurt. We are doing what? Why, we have never done this before? Why NOW? (Why when they are little and not for me when I was little?) I told her that I owed her an apology. I was wrongheadedly attempting to save her some huge future disappointments by keeping the things she could lose to a minimum. I have realized that I...

Hard Hard-Wired For Empathy?

I thought I would share this very cool video about empathy that I saw over at welcome to my brain: Thank you Christine. I think it is interesting that the narrator points out that if our empathic nature is repressed, by our parenting, education our business practices, our governments the secondary dives come in to play the narcissism, materialism, violence and aggression set in. I find the whole discussion interesting because I have often mused that my childhood, my life and my family relationships would have been much easier if I had been able to suppress my natural empathy, and adapted to my familial core nature of materialism,...

Phantom Comments

I have had a couple of cases where reader comments have been misplaced in my Intensedebate comment system. It is not personal. I do not moderate comments that are less than 30 days old. I have only had to remove comments once….I was trying to avoid an all-out family feud. Short of that, I hope that I never feel that I have to. If you happen to post a comment and it does not appear on the page, please let me know, so far I have been able to find and post the ones that I know about. There are many sign in options for leaving comments. You can now sign with FaceBook and Twitter, Open Id, Word Press to just use a name and email address, theoretically...

Here Comes the Sun And I Say It’s Alright

I think spring has finely sprung, it got up to 85 today according to my out-door thermometer! The kids got to play outside and came in smelling like wet dirt and grass…I love it. Mr. Sunday was home this week end and played catch with our big girl. Look at that toe point – very important in soft-ball. Mad was home all week for spring break. All week I thought it was the last weekend in April and that Easter was THIS Sunday! Welcome to my world. CoCo wasn’t all that cooperative for her evaluation. Why buy toys when paper towel rolls are free? It didn’t help that I thought it was at 2:30 instead of 2:00. How...

There is Hope

So, I ain’t all that. I have done nothing so special in my life. I am not what one would expect from the daughter of two college educated parents. Not what you might think of when you think the daughter of a therapist and a patented inventor, with a second home in Aspen. I am no, physicist, accountant, or attorney. I am just a devoted wife of 17 years, mostly stay at home mom of 3, surrogate mother to more, cool Auntie to many, and these days part-part time gymnastics coach, who struggles daily to provide for my children. There is no bag of chips with that. There is no incessant bragging to friends on my behalf. I am certainly not someone...

The joys of having a much older sibling home for spring-break. My five year old has started using “air-quotes” And My 3 year old is saying “eh-hem” “Eh-hem, ice-cream.” “Eh-hem, up-ppie” “Eh-hem, milky” “Eh-hem, mommy *insert air quotes here* “needs a break”.”...

Hey, That’s My Foster Kin You Are Bitching and Whining About

I have resisted doing my own post about this bloggers wife “Foster Abba” for a long time,I really didn’t want to “go there” with my blog. Her post on the Layers of Loss, where she outlines the many things she has lost by adopting her child, left my husband saying that next time they should get a dog. And me? I am not kidding when I say it sent me looking for my bottle of Xanax to deal with my full blown PTSD adrenalin overload. All I could hear is my self-screaming in my own head: “Your Loss…what YOU have LOST! You didn’t even want kids in the first place? That does not put one high on the list of people who should adopt. You had to jump through hoops to adopt a kid nobody else wanted? Including YOU. Your dream of a family died when you sent her to boot camp,...

A First-hand Account of Holding Therapy in the UK | Invisible England

A First-hand Account of Holding Therapy in the UK As far as I am aware this is the first time a first-hand account of Holding Therapy in the UK has been published on the internet. I have seen and heard evidence from a number of sources that reassures me that this description is genuine. This child would have experienced this treatment on a regular basis between the ages of 11 and 13 and the sessions sometimes could last for several hours, usually only ending when the child submitted to the authority of the therapists. Holding Therapy will probably have taken place today with a number of different children, sometimes as young as 8. A First-hand Account of Holding Therapy in the UK | Invisible England I found this blog threw Jean Mercer at CHILDMYTHS. I am really grateful to...

Who Am I Anyway

There is a doctor around here who has making news recently; It is actually a amazing story…wife finds her husband a live kidney donor on FaceBook…how cool is that? But that is not what draws me to the story…the doctor who did the transplant is…a Dr. A. Koffron. No I don’t know him that is the thing…should I? It is a funny thing to not know who you are. I mean, yes I am indeed Sunday Marie Koffron Taylor, daughter of Robert Koffron and Linda Andrews or should I say Jacqueline Jean Lessard, my mother’s original pre-adoption name? Koffron is a very uncommon name around these parts, and until this doctor made news by coming here form Iowa a few years ago to set up a new transplant center, my direct relations were the only Koffrons in the state. The only DNA Koffrons we have ever known personally...

Trying to Make Sense Of The Therapy Bit

Fainites · 5 hours ago Hi. I was trying to make sense of the therapy bit. Was the attachment therapy done to make you attach to your parents? Or foster parents? What age were you? That is a Million Dollar question. That makes no sense. The “blanket therapy” I described I believe was meant more as a “rage reduction therapy” which is the same/similar “technique” as rebirthing therapy, made famous by the death of Candace Newmaker. I do remember being told that it had to do with me being mad at my mother, about not taking care of or protecting me, however she was not there...I think the therapist was playing the role of my mother and...

Hundreds show support for mother involved in standoff with Detroit police | Detroit Free Press | freep.com

Hundreds turned out to a rally in Detroit today to support a mother, who was charged after a standoff with police last week after Child Protective Services came to take the girl, claiming medical neglect. Godboldo, 56, was charged with three counts each of assault with a dangerous weapon and resisting and obstructing a police officer, and one count each of felony firearm and discharging a firearm inside a building after barricading herself in her home March 24 with her daughter. She's accused of firing a gun at police, though one of her attorneys said last week that her client did not shoot at officers. Hundreds show support for mother involved in standoff with Detroit police | Detroit Free Press | freep.com I don’t have all of the details of the story obviously. I don’t...

I Was Told Not To Get Birth Control Today — Our Ordinary Life

“Now she lost my attention as there was no way I’d have baby after baby and just give them up for adoption.” I Was Told Not To Get Birth Control Today — Our Ordinary Life Bravo, Kristen!!! She talks about her conversation with a picketer outside of her local Planned Parenthood office, I commend her for speaking up and taking a stand. It is disheartening to me that “good” people would spend their time irresponsibly proselytizing that young people should forgo birth control in favor of relinquishing their resulted child to adoption. I am sorry I see nothing godly about that advice. I think that it is interesting that those of us whose lives...