Sam's first statement to Mark when hearing that he was leaving me was: But you're married to Mom and that means you live with her forever.

Sorry to say, that took a much bigger bite out of me than the small nibble my husband felt.

When asked why he was leaving, Mark told our five-year old that it was because, "I don't love Mom any more. I love someone else."

To say I hit the roof is an understatement, but calmed myself enough to eventually try to explain to my possessed spouse how a statement like that would be interpreted by our son.

I'd been writing about adoption for almost three years when Mark left. I wrote on average 2000 words per day on a number of different sites and had developed a reputation for being able to work without a net and attract readers. Strong feelings on advocacy in general and for older parents adopting kept me cranking out information, reactions, opinions and details, including much of my real life experiences. I was comfortable in my stance and confident that my POV was valid.

When the ground under my feet, and those of my children, shifted violently and suddenly, however, all comfort and confidence flew the coop at about the same pace my husband had set on his bailing.

In many ways, I felt that I'd come to the inevitable conclusion of a fifteen-year set up.

In 1993,

Unlike other relationships I've had that took a turn South and never veered, I did not see my husband's destruction of our family coming. The news that he had emotionally checked out and was about to physically do the same dropped out of the sky suddenly and shattered my world. Within a week I passed through the states of denial, paused at the junction of begging and pleading, then headed down the road called hysteria, frequently contemplated taking a left down the suicide cul de sac as I considered that permanent detour.

A week later, I realized I was doing more harm than good and needed to get away for a while to give the kids a space that wasn't inhabited by mommy-gone-crazy and me a chance to breath without Mark's breath flavoring mine with imagined sweetness of the fifteen years we'd been together.

I asked for three weeks, then took off for England to spend time with true friends and one of the strongest women I know. I walked Exmoor, watched ponies and people, got caught in a goat stampede, met some lovely people, all after waking each morning shaking, crying and disappointed that real was still real and that I was still around to deal with it.

Yes, I've been gone from this site for quite a while now, and, no, I don't know how back I am able to be, but a kick in the butt from one long-time reader has inspired me to begin a series of posts on the whys and wherefores of my absence and how they relate to adoption in the hope that some will get something out of my experience that may be found helpful or with a similar ring that might be consoling in a "You are not alone" sort of way.

I've been known as a bit of a scrapper for adoption advocacy and have taken on some of the biggies in the realm of anti-adoption rabble rousing. From the gate here and now, however, I have to say that I'm not in that game any more ... just don't have the heart or the energy to take on those opposed to adoption at any cost, for any reason, or anyone who would wrap that sentiment in a "reform" ball gown and take it to town. Bait me if you like, but I won't be rising to it now. I'm simply too sad.

I'll start this return into Adoption Blog Land with the flat and true statement that my children started life at a Square One upon which "LOSS" was written big and can never be erased. Both were abandoned as infants in Cambodia by families that are guaranteed to be too poor and too hopeless to do any more than take their newborn babies almost directly from womb to orphanage, and although there are some who may stretch assumptions so far as to insist those families rue that day, I know enough about Cambodia and her people now to understand that looking back with crippling regret is not a pastime that has much point in that country.

From the top, can we all agree that Sharon Stone is an actress and a model, a woman made famous by flashing her bits and looking pretty in expensive gowns, not rocket science or theology or international affairs? 

Can we also agree that China's Tibet policy has never been about the benevolent caring for a people with their own rich and ancient history, but more of a land and power grab that's been often downright nasty?

Fine.

It takes a lot to inspire me enough these days to attempt to expend much of the little energy I have socked away in my personal resources, but the news coming out of the UN report on widespread and long-standing abuse of children under its care has me spitting.

Aside from the fact that this smacks as loudly of insufficient to requirements as the Catholic Church being in charge of honestly reporting and dealing with allegations of sexual abuse by members of its clergy, the suggestion that this information is at all new or shocking is as disingenuous as it is misleading. As this report from 2006 states clearly, this is old news. The report, released by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's office on Thursday, concludes that violence against children is widely accepted as normal and occurs in every country, every society and every social group. 
 

We knew children were victims of violence, but even so it was very
surprising and shocking that it was so widespread," Mehr Khan Williams, the UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, told reporters Thursday. It cuts across cultures, income levels, education levels. No country is immune from it."

I've been trying to write blogs ... honestly, I have ... but not only am I shaky and unfocused these days as I try to come to terms with a life I didn't in a million years expect to have to face, I am about as self-possessed as any person consumed with grief. It's not a sharing sort of space, grief, but one where every throught ends up leading straight back to the personal misery that doesn't even allow for the outrage and compassion I know I would normally be stirred toward, given the state of the world today.

Yes, Sam and Cj are better off than they would have been left in a Cambodian orphanage and facing having to make their own way in the world at the age of eight, if, that is, they beat the odds and managed to hang on to life until the age of five which many there do not. This, however, was not the plan.

The natural disasters that have parts of Asia crumbling and tumbling like chunks of sky plummeting earthwards amid a maelstrom, crushing huge numbers of people in the process puts me, and many others, first in mind of the children. 

The ancient, the ill, the infirm and the children may not always be the first to die in the initial waves of whatever nature is throwing, but they are the most likely to succumb to the inevitable aftermath of devastation. Disease, famine, exposure to the elements, take an easy toll on the weak, and when the strong are threatened, they are often reduced to grabbing what little there is to grab out of the hands of those not able to hang on.

I could write daily on the absurdity of the progressive moves toward making international adoption more difficult as orphan numbers the world over soar, but even I get tired of beating that poor decomposing relic of a horse.

Sometimes, however, a news report prompts another flagellation session, as this one from Uganda does today.

Titled "Stolen childhood", the piece opens with details of the life of a 15-year-old orphan who has been left to raise her six siblings, the youngest of which is four.

A new law is making its way through the Maryland Senate that would make it a crime for "teachers, nurses, police officers and other professionals to fail to report evidence to authorities if they suspect a child may have been abused."

As it stands now, various licensing boards can "discipline" social workers and such when they fail to report child abuse when the recognize it, but those supporting the bill don't think that's enough.