I am in a foul, foullllll mood this morning so everybody please stay the (heck) out of my way. I am usually a centrist on most things involving the adoption debate. Always taking, or at least trying to take the so-called intellectual high road. Interested in hearing all points of view. Even when I think a particular point of view is idiotic or just downright obnoxious and rude. First seeking to understand and then seeking to be understood. Blah-blah. Blah-blah. But, I'm not feeling any of that this morning. Not one bit.

It has always been fairly easy for me to take the middle ground on adoption related issues. By training and by temperament I'm just not prone to taking things personally even when someone is deliberately trying to insult or offend me overtly or subtly. Oh, don't get me wrong my buttons are very easily pushed about a lot of things, but not so much so about adoption things. But today it's a whole different story.

I started out trying to find stuff on the internet about adoption to write about and for some unsettling reason every blasted thing I came across was something negative, depressing, or flat out disturbing. In the grand scheme of things I gotta ask, what was that all about? I won't even bother with posting links to some of the sites, pages, and articles that I came across. It would only (hack) me off again and I'm already worked up into a hissyfit.

Then I read some comments left on my post from yesterday and became irritated as hell. Yes, I know that coercion in adoption still exists. Duh! What idiot wouldn't know that? I still think it is awful. And the thought of it just makes me angry and disgusted.

In all fairness, the comments that were left were in response to my own comment that it would be "awful to know that coercion still exists," or something like that. I gotta do a better job of writing down what is actually in my head. I gotta become a better writer period because the same thing happened to me a couple of weeks ago too. I thought one thing, but wrote another. So, I gotta work on that.

But, here I go again. I am not writing about what is actually in my head and that is this: Adoption sucks! There, I said it. That's how I am feeling this morning and I don't give a hoot what anyone thinks about where that is all coming from or what my so-called motivation is, or any of that stuff.

Play Freud all you want about what this tirade represents about my true subconscious feelings about adoption. Have at it. I studied Freud in depth in school. Read damn near all of his works. I could care less what is going on in my subconscious right now. I am consciously stating: Adoption sucks! Period. That's how I am feeling...right now, right this very minute. There. So let's deal with that why don't we. (For all of you armchair therapists and shrinks there is a psychobabble name for that as well...it is called therapeutic confrontation and is taken, in part, from something called Reality Therapy.)

I read the link on the values, or principles or whatever the hell they are called that are advocated by the highly respected, world famous, most influential Pertman Adoption Institute (which I had never even heard of until two days ago). And I got to wondering more about this coercion thing. Do ANY of us adoptive parents know for certain that an element of coercion was not present in our own adoptions? How can we KNOW that? How can we be so sure?

Continued...