It must be terrible not to have your
own.. not to feel the kick inside,
the twiddle of fingers against your
ribs. The caress across your womb.
The nudging against your heart.

Not to arch back in gasping surprise
as your near-born stretches, limbs
pushing against your lungs, impeding
your breath. To feel the nurturing
emanating from your centre, the
exchange of love and an inexpressible
affection.

It must be hard not to know the pain
and ecstasy of birth, to hold your
own born...your own child. Yours yet
separate and of their own. To gaze
at this child that lived in the
imagination for nine months. And to
feel that rushing sense of pride as
the reconciliation of this person
and the child meet in the crook of
your arms.

To have your gaze meet, as you both
draw your first breath of air of you
new lives. Yours- the new life of a
mother. His - his own and as your
proud son.

To feel the sting of tears and
overwhelming gratitude to have born
this beautiful being. And he is far
more beautiful than your imagination
nurtured for nine months.

To cry at this perfection, as he
opens his mouth and watches you in
knowing, frowns at you scowls then
smiles (yes I'm sure he smiled).

And as the enormity of this union
and event washes over you, to feel
the incredible happiness and content.

It must be sad to know that you can
never create your own, that you will
never experience this, the most
important and primal occasion.

To transform from a girl to a mother.
To feel the shift.
To feel empowered.

It must be grievous,
and it must be hard.......

But it gives you no right to resent
these young girls who can and do. It
gives you no right punish them with
your laws, and it gives you no right
to continue the facade of having
experienced this birth, while
closeting out those who could, as
you mime your roles and deny their
existence.

It gives you no right to hate them
to condemn them to slander their
name. As you hide your own fears and
incapability's.

It gives you no right to deny their
importance to these children you now
harbour as your own, and to deny
"your" childs importance to them.

Without these girls you could not
enact your fantasies and longed
desires. Yet you crush their
existence under a well turned heel
and with righteous breath deny them
civility.

We are not whores who abandoned our
children, "the careless, heartless
women incapable of even loving their
own child.

We have not forgotten our children.

We are the women who, as young girls
were alone and afraid, who in their
vulnerability and isolation were
taken advantage of, exploited and
abused, and had their children,
through coercion and solitude's veil,
taken from their care into strangers
grasps.

We hold ourselves responsible for our
confusion.
We hold ourselves responsible for
our vulnerability.
We hold ourselves responsibility for
our despair.

We do not hold our selves responsible
for our exploitation.
What do you hold your selves responsible
for?

We hold you responsible for allowing
this exploitation for organising it
and instigating it. For withholding
information of our rights and for
disempowering us in this concealment.

We hold you responsible for
withholding support, for isolating
us, for not having adequate support
in our community for alone and
single mothers.

For targeting our bodies as
breeders and for labelling us as
unreliable, unworthy and unfit. For
setting up and sustaining an
ideology of condemnation of our
succulent bodies.

For feeding off our flesh. For
constructing offices, laws, legal
systems and social workers to feed
off our fleshy exuberance and to
steal our dignity.

For giving these social workers the
power to intervene and destroy our
lives, our hopes and our esteem. For
giving them enormous power without
monitoring, to carry out their own
and your agenda.

For gagging us and portraying
ourselves in derogatory fashion. For
using your power to silence us. To
abuse our already disempowered
status. To fill our minds with
condemnation and self mis-trust.

To rape us of our children!

Adoption is a sexual assault carried
out under the guise of social reform.
You lie to protect your wares, your
business, your clients.

We are kept quiet while your clients
play out their roles.
You protect their paranoia, their
vulnerabilities. We are expected to
remain in shamed silence.

We are not ashamed
We are not abandoning mothers.
We are indignant and angry.

And you cannot use this blackmail anymore.

You.
You are all responsible for carrying
such condemnation of us that allowed
rationalisation of this rape.

We have been assaulted in a sexual
kind and we did not deserve it. We
did not ask for it.

We were alone, abandoned,
disempowered and scared.
Drowning in selfworthlessness, you
held our heads under in our demise.
"how could I deserve this child?"

Surely we deserved help, not punishment.

And now we are expected to suffer
our grief silently in punishment for
being young and ideal?
An excessive penalty for the ideals
of youth in love.

Must we endure this flagellation for
evermore? A sentence of eighteen
years is too long to wait.
When another day of not knowing is a
century too late.

Kim 1994.
Babe taken for adoption in 1987.

oooOOOooo