Category Archives: Nonfiction Essays

A New Essay in Under the Sun

collage by author

I have a new essay in Under the Sun about losing my first child to adoption.

A writing accident

I never meant to write about any of this. For decades I was a reader, not a writer. Then a terrible thing happened. And I began writing a story about it. One morning my husband went to work and left a legal pad on the kitchen table. I filled most of it that morning, making the terrible thing into sort of a fiction. Over the next weeks, I kept writing, even though I hadn’t done any creative writing since high school. I was processing the terrible thing by making it into a story.

At some point I stopped into one of my favorite coffee shops before picking my kids up from school and saw a stack of flyers about a writing workshop that was going to be held in their backroom on Saturdays. Cool, I thought. Because I think the thing I’ve been writing could be a novel. I folded the flyer in half and put it on my bulletin board in the kitchen.

Without ever unfolding the flyer and reading the bottom half of it with the description of the workshop, I showed up. That’s when I found out it was a memoir workshop. The story of my secret teen-age pregnancy poured onto the page. At the end of this weeks- long workshop there was a reader’s theater type performance. It made me brave. And I found out people wanted to hear the story about the son I had lost.

Writing on purpose

I took the workshop again. And again. At every performance there was always a birthmother or an adoptee in the audience. Even though starting to write memoir had been an accident, the telling of the story became more and more important to me. And it seemed important to other people too.

I also kept writing the story that was a fictionalized version of the terrible thing. When I was 54-year-old empty nester/new divorceé I got into an MFA program, and the novel about the terrible thing became a my master’s thesis. But all the while I was sending out personal essays about adoption and they were getting published. I thought my essays and the other essays I was reading about adoption might change the adoption industry.

Time has passed. I’ll be 70 this year. I am marching forward while the world marches backwards. A new Baby Scoop Era is coming. Amy Coney Barrett as much as told us so when she touted adoption as an alternative to abortion during her confirmation hearing. The recently leaked Supreme Court draft opinion has confirmed it.

I wrote about the loss of reproductive rights on this blog way back in 2012. And here’s a weird and creepy thought. Has the Hulu version of the Handmaid’s Tale been desensitizing us to our dystopian future? I was obsessed with the Handmaid’s Tale for the first few seasons and its parallels to the adoption and the Baby Scoop. You can read about that here and here.

I write about adoption

Here’s why

I write about adoption, but it can be awkward, this birthmother/ first mother thing. The other night I attended a birthday party, and chatted with a couple I hadn’t yet met here in my rather large condo building.  They passed their 4-month-old back and forth between them as we were introduced. I knew from our building’s private Facebook group that the baby had come into their lives unexpectedly. This little boy, with the face of a wise old man, had surprised his bio parents too. His mother denied her pregnancy until she was rushed to the ER. The father was even more surprised. 

“Denise is a writer,” someone said as they introduced me.

“What do you write about?” the baby’s mother asked.

“I write about adoption,” I said, trying not to pull any punches, as I gestured toward the baby.

They might have flinched a little. I might have mumbled a half-hearted qualifier. But then I told them my story, and they told me theirs. “There won’t be any secrets,” the dad said. “He’s going to know the whole story.”

“He’s going to know everything,” the mother said.

“It was so different back in the day,” we said simultaneously, meaning the Baby Scoop Era. “Secrets,” we muttered. “Lies.”

What I dread most

And then neither of them said what I dread most. You were so generous to give up your baby.  No one gives up a baby out of generosity. Here, have mine, says absolutely no one. Really, take him. I insist. C’mon, you know you want him. The most wonderful, kind, intelligent people utter this generosity line. They say it because they don’t know what to say. They say it because they want to be kind. They say it because they know that saying, “How could you do that?” is the wrong thing to say, and they are desperately searching for the right thing to say.

I write fiction and essays

I write about adoption because I have a lot to say about it.. So many thoughts about what we could say to others. Thoughts about how we could change things. Here’s a short story (fiction) that I published on Medium.

And here’s an essay (a true story) about giving up my son, also on Medium.

National Adoption Month

National Adoption Awareness Month is two-thirds over. I’m going to keep posting on Medium until I turn the calendar page. I’ll take a break then, but I’ll be back. Follow this blog. Or follow me on Twitter @demanuelclemen

Secrets and Lies in Adoption

The big cover-up!
Cover up those secrets and lies!
photo by author

Medium.com essays

Secrets and lies abound in the the world of adoption. I’m finished with secrets and lies and have been for some time. November is National Adoption Awareness Month. Or NAAM, for short. I’ve made a promise to myself to write about my experience with adoption. I’ve been posting pieces on Medium. Here’s another one:

More writing

And here’s where you can find links to various publications where my fiction and nonfiction about adoption appear.

Dystopia’s Child


photo by author



National Adoption Month

“Dystopia’s Child” was originally published in LUMINA vol. XVIII. Yesterday I republished it on Medium.com. Because…

November is National Adoption Awareness Month.

Not just happy stories

As a birthmother, I’m a proponent of lots of different types of adoption stories. Not just the happy ones we’re blasted with all during the month of November. Because, well… not all adoption stories are happy. Every adoption begins with loss. A child losing their mother. A mother losing her child.

You can find the story, Dystopia’s Child, here.

Links to other stories and nonfiction essays about adoption are here.

An Essay About Reunion

My essay about reunion has been published in “The Beacon,” the newsletter of the American Adoption Congress. Reunion, as we know, is a really big deal. Probably everyone involved in adopted has some fear about it. And of course after you reunite with your son or daughter, you might also meet their adoptive parents. The meetings and introductions might go on and on. Aunts, uncles, grandparents siblings. It’s a tsunami of emotion. I was super nervous about all of it.  The title of the essay is “How the World Didn’t End and Nobody Died.” Here’s the link.

The target audience for the AAC is mostly adoptees, I think. And some birthparents too.

But I  wrote this essay about reunion with adoptive parents in mind. I would especially like adoptive parents to know that reunion can go well. And that their pre-conceived notions of what birthmothers are like might not be true. So if you know some adoptive parents, maybe pass it on.

Thank you.

I’m grateful to The Beacon for the publication.

National Adoption Month 2016

I have an essay here.  While there’s only one National Adoption Month each year, the topic never goes away and I always have something more to say.  As a birthmother (and a grandmother,) I often feel that respectability and understanding are beyond my reach. People have strong opinions about adoption, strong impressions of what/who they think a birthmother is. Birthmothers and adoptive parents take sides and stand sharply opposed to one another much like we do in the arena of national politics. It’s hard to hold hands and sing kumbaya. Villains are real. Bad things happen. People do things for personal gain without considering the bigger picture. But every story is more complicated than we usually imagine. I respect Carrie Goldman’s efforts to share many points of view during National Adoption Month 2016 in her series 30 Adoption Portraits in 30 Days on the ChicagoNow website.

Chicago reflected

Postpartum Depression

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The anthology, “Mothering Through the Darkness”

Postpartum depression afflicts more than 3 million mothers per year.

I have an essay in this anthology, “Mothering Through the Darkness.” The book in general is about the darker side of the postpartum experience. It’s just out from She Writes Press. Postpartum depression was my personal sequel to adoption loss–and was mostly caused by the unresolved grief over losing my son to adoption.

If you know someone who has recently had a baby and things don’t seem quite right, help that person get help. You’ll be helping a mother and a baby. You’ll be helping a whole family. Talk about it. Then do something. The book  would be a great conversation starter and a fine resource.

Birthmother Shame

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Penitent Magdalene by Ciseri, 1864

An essay in a new anthology

Birthmother shame and postpartum depression are closely related, I believe. My essay, “My Face in the Darkness” explores the link. This essay will be included in a new anthology called Mothering Through the Darkness.

Birthmother shame

Somewhere in the timeframe of writing and submitting the essay, I came upon this survey. So I took the survey, realizing anew how completely abysmal my first experience of childbirth was. Mind you, my son was born in 1970, and there has been a fair amount of reform since then, but the survey questions did not evoke a single memory of support or compassion. Every interaction with the nurses and doctors in the hospital before, during, and after my son’s birth was tainted with shaming and judgement. I know that this story is not an unusual one among birthmothers

Women, girls, and shame

Women and girls are subjected to a lot of shaming in our society. Our bodies and our clothing choices are shamed, as are other aspects of our appearance. Everything we do is held up to scrutiny in a way that seems bound to our gender. As a mother of two daughters and grandmother to two granddaughters, I think about shame in the context of their lives. You can read more about shame  HERE. Or watch THIS. I’m looking forward to reading the other essays in “Mothering Through the Darkness.”  I wouldn’t be surprised if, in some way, shame figures into each and every story.

And speaking of surveys, have you seen THIS ONE?

Published in Ramshackle Review

I’m happy to announce I have a very short piece published in “Ramshackle Review.”
I love the look of this lit mag.
 A perfect fit, I think, for this piece of mine which is the first two pages of my memoir.
 I have a completed manuscript and I’m looking for a publisher.

“Saying Goodbye” Published

 

The anthology, Saying Goodbye, was released today. An essay of mine called “Holding Him Softly is in it.” It’s about saying goodbye to my son. I handed him over to the adoption agency when he was was just a few days old. I was 17.

The book is a satisfying mix of essays that are sad and funny.  It would be a great gift for someone who is moving, retiring, graduating, grieving–saying goodbye to people, places, or things.

If you like to read a bit more of the story about my son and me, there’s this. Birth Mother is a novella-length memoir meant to be read in an one sitting or over a couple of days.