In the past few blogs I’ve written about wanting to love my birth mother Rosa, a woman I did not get to know. The mother who raised me, however, I knew and loved dearly.
She was 50 when she decided to keep me. her name was Esther, but I called her Mutti, for she was German. She was born in 1888, while Queen Victoria still ruled in England. Picture being raised by a Victorian woman! I could ...
Continue Reading →This blog post was inspired by Denise Oliver Velez’s diary in The Daily Koz, https://bit.ly/1F9qYs3 in which she writes about the almost complete lack of representation of non-White women when female merits are praised during this month. It comes down to the usual, that history is written by the victors, and those have belonged, in our time and age, to the White race.
I was thinking of blogging about women writers whose ...
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Not easy, working on spiritual action. And I don’t know if that is an adequate term for what I am focusing on in my meditations.
I know my mother died early in her life, of a massive stroke. People said she died of a broken heart at having lost me, regardless of her repeated efforts and sacrifice to remain connected.
Once I had learned my story as my mother saw it, based on what my siblings shared with me, I ...
Continue Reading →There are still times when I feel pretty wretched. They are no longer because of something someone said to me. But they come at night or during meditation, and have to do with my relationship with my mother. Not my German mother who in so many areas is deserving of my love and praise, but the mother who cradled me beneath her heart and whose placenta fed me for the months I lived in her womb. I am not ...
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Does it bother you that people ask you the dumbest things? Like “Are you adopted,” or “Where are you from?” when it’s obvious that you are biracial or that the people you call mom and dad were not present at your conception and birth?
In my case, people wanted to know who my birth mother was and why she gave me up. ...
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In writing my recent book, Split at the Root: A Memoir of Love and Lost Identity (Kindle) or Split at the Root: A Memoir of Love and Lost Identity, I tell the story of growing up within a culture and a race that was different to my own. Here’s an excerpt:
The night I finished reading Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John, the wind blowing outside my window ushered messages into my dreams.
I was Annie John, and had ...
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I had spoken to my father a few times on the phone. In the following is an excerpt from Split at the Root: A Memoir of Love and Lost Identity of my first meeting with him.
What would Gil see when he looked at me, I wondered? Would my lips, as I shaped ...
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In my recent book, Split at the Root: A Memoir of Love and Lost Identity (Kindle) or Split at the Root: A Memoir of Love and Lost Identity, I tell the story of growing up within a culture and a race that was different to my own. Here’s an excerpt as to why I had to start a therapy program:
I stand motionless atop a rugged cliff, scanning a landscape where a cloudless sky spans the horizon. The jasmine-scented breeze ...
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In writing my recent book, Split at the Root: A Memoir of Love and Lost Identity (Kindle) or Split at the Root: A Memoir of Love and Lost Identity, I tell the story of growing up within a culture and a race that was different to my own. Here’s an excerpt:
We arrived in Los Angeles in July 1975. Two weeks later I met with Walter Kohner a film agent who handled primarily European actors.
“I am curious to know, Catana,” ...
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Those who seek to adopt and those who have adopted don’t want to read about unsuccessful adoption stories or hear from adult adoptees who are at odds with their fate of having been given up for adoption. It’s easy to understand why that’s so. After all, parenting is the one science for which there are no guidelines. My childhood, as the only black pearl among white ones in Guatemala City, was undoubtedly a happy one.
Going to town ...
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