Blog Masonry

My. Book. Is. Finished.

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]   I have fantasized about writing this, “My book is finished!” post for so long.   Writing MATCHED has filled every  chunk of free time I could beg, borrow, or negotiate for over the last three years. Raising three young kids at the same time, I was tired. A lot. But I didn’t slow down, because every minute I wasn’t freelancing, or helping someone with distributive properties or mean-girl recess strategies, I was writing, until the whole picture—a true picture of modern domestic adoption—appeared.   The days of hopeful adoptive parents waiting for The Call are long gone. Pete and I had to find a woman who would give us her baby, on our own—I mean that’s crazy, right? How do you actually do that? As our search unfolded, we’d have to consider and answer questions I’d never even imagined: Would we be okay adopting a baby that was a product of rape? What about a baby born of prostitution? It was gritty and hard and wonderful and worth every false start a million times over.   When our son came home, I found myself straddling two worlds: One in which he would always know his birth mom’s name and how to find her, and another in which the name of the woman who’d given birth to me forty years before was still sealed. My file, Closed. It seemed crazy to me. That same year, the voters of Washington State agreed and voted yes on a bill that would allow adoptees to open their adoption files. Legal access to my original birth certificate went from “Never, ever, ever,” to, “Sure, just send us fifteen bucks.” I sent the check. And two weeks later, after I received my original birth certificate, I sent a Facebook message to a woman with a quail as her profile pic.   After three-plus years of huddling alone (but never really alone) with MATCHED, I am thrilled and terrified to begin sharing my story with you now.   Denise   Click HERE to preview the first ten pages of MATCHED.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]...